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PAUL: A STUDY IN SOCIAL 
AND RELIGIOUS HISTORY 





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A STUDY IN SOCIAL AN 
RELIGIOUS HISTORY 


BY 


ADOLF DEISSMANN 


D.THEOL, (MARBURG); D.D, (ABERDEEN, ST. ANDREWS, MANCHESTER) 
PROFESSOR ORDINARIUS OF NEW TESTAMENT EXEGESIS IN THE UNIVERSITY OF BERLIN 
CORRESPONDING MEMBER OF THE ARCHZOLOGICAL INSTITUTE OF THE GERMAN REICH 
AUTHOR OF ‘‘ LIGHT FROM THE ANCIENT EAST” 


TRANSLATED BY 


WILLIAM E. WILSON, B.D. 


PROFESSOR OF NEW TESTAMENT THEOLOGY AND CHRISTIAN ETHICS 
IN THE SELLY OAK COLLEGES, BIRMINGHAM 


SECOND EDITION, FULLY REVISED AND ENLARGED 


WITH SIX AUTOTYPE PLATES AND SEVEN DIAGRAMS 


H@BBER AND STOUGHTON 
LIMITED LONDON 
1926 


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Made and Printed in Great Britain by 
THE ABERDEEN UNIVERSITY PRESS LIMITED, ABERDEEN 


UNIVERSITATI MANCUNIENSI 


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PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION 


Tus new edition of my ‘ Paul’? (published in German 
in 1925) represents a thorough revision of the first 
edition, which had been out of print for many years 
both in German and English. Amongst the additions 
are discussions concerning the principles essential to 
the cult and its various types, concerning the history of 
primitive Christianity regarded as a developing cult, 
and concerning the essential nature and types of mysti-_ 
cism.? The peculiarity of the Pauline Christ-mysticism | 
has been brought out altogether more sharply than 
before. I hope that this may serve to clear away 
some of the manifold misunderstandings to which my 
interpretation especially of Christ-mysticism has been 
exposed. I hope to be able to continue the discussion 
of Pauline problems in a book of ‘Pauline Studies,’ 
already long in hand, which will be published by 
J. C. B. Mohr, Tiibingen. I take this opportunity 
of thanking my dear friends Mr. Lionel R. M. Strachan 
and Professor William E. Wilson for their careful work 


as translators. 
ADOLF DEISSMANN. 


BERLIN- WILMERSDORF, 
PRINZREGENTENSTRASSE, 6, January, 1926. 


1 St. Paui. A Study in Social and Religious History, translated by Lionel 
R. M. Strachan, London, 1911. Since the issue of that work the chief lines of my 
interpretation of Paul’s religion were given in my Selly Oak Lectures, 1923, pub- 
lished under the title: The Religion of Jesus and the Faith of Paul, translated by 
William E. Wilson, London, 1923. A Swedish edition was issued, Stockholm, 
1925, a Japanese, Tokyo, 1926. 

2 [Here and almost always in other places throughout the book the English 
word ‘Mysticism’ translates the German ‘ Mystik’ not ‘ Mysticismus’ (see below, 
p. 147 ff.) —W.E.W.]. 


vil 


PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION 


An Anatolian, Paul, a man of the ancients, a homo 
novus, rising from the mass of the insignificant many, 
heeded by no man of letters among his pagan con- 
temporaries, yet destined to be a leading personality in 
the world’s history ; a homo religiosus, at once a classic 
of mysticism and a most practical man of affairs; a 
prophet and dreamer, crucified to the world in Christ, 
yet for ever memorable as a citizen of the world and 
traveller in it, and still moulding the world at the 
present moment—such is the man whose outlines I 
have been seeking to portray. After long years devoted 
to the study of the ancient records of Paul and their 
modern interpreters, it was my rare good fortune to 
find a new teacher to supplement those to whom I shall 
always look up with gratitude, the old teachers at home. 
This new teacher is in no sense academic: paper and 
paragraphs are unknown to her; all that she teaches 
she dispenses with generous hand in the bright sunshine 
and open air—she is in fact the world of the South 
and East, the world of Paul. If the western stranger — 
approach this mistress but reverently beneath the olive- 
trees, she will gladly, and with a mother’s joy, speak to 
him of her great son. 

Two journeys to the East, in 1906 and 1909, enabled 
me to realise the long-cherished hope of seeing with my 
own eyes the places where the primitive gospel was 
preached and Paul’s life-work was done. With some 
small exceptions I visited all the places of importance 
in the primitive history of Christianity, and I think I 
may say that I gained a general impression of the struc- 
ture of the Pauline world which to me personally has 
increased in value and effect from year to year. There 


Viii 
* 


PREFACE TO FIRST EDITION 1X 


is no need to labour the point ; the advantages of such 
journeys to the student can only be ascertained by 
actual trial. If the traveller goes in a teachable spirit, 
and leaves at home all conceit of his own superior 
civilisation, he will learn to see things in their true 
relief and to view them from the proper distance. He 
sees what light and shade are, and the meaning of 
heights and depths. His appreciation of simplicity and 
wild spontaneous growth, and of things not yet harmon- 
ised and conventionalised, becomes keener ; wondrous 
problems of classification and division suggest them- 
selves; the extremes of contrast between the modern 
book-culture of the West and the ancient non-literary 
culture of Anatolia become tangible. [Il fares it, on 
the other hand, with our painful inheritance from the 
scholar’s study—the microscopic ingenuity, inexorable, 
and overweening in its ignorance of the world, which 
rules straight lines with wooden ruler and cuts out 
boldly with scissors of steel. Even Doctor Bahrdt* re- 
turning to Giessen, would not say again to the Four 
Evangelists : 
Become like one of ourselves I implore you, 
Spruce, dapper, sleek—or they'll ignore you. 

Summing up the effect of my travels upon myself, I 
may say that the good germs of an historical apprecia- 
tion of Paul, which I owed to my teachers and my own 
studies, underwent new growth in the apostle’s own 
field and beneath the rays of his sun, but that many 

‘(Karl Friedrich Bahrdt (1741-1792), a notorious Professor of 
Theology at Giessen, whose ‘ New Revelations of God in Epistolary 
and Narrative Form,’ an attempted modernisation of the New Testa- 


ment, was satirised by Goethe in a ‘ Prologue’ (1774), in which occurs 
the couplet : 


‘So miisst ihr werden, wie unser einer, 
Geputzt, gestutzt, glatt—’s gilt sonst keiner.’ 


—L.RMS.] 


x PREFACE TO FIRST EDITION 


rank shoots that had sprung up in the shade of the 
school walls withered under the same beams. Never 
for one moment, however, have I experienced the ‘ dis- 
appointment’ which has come to be characteristic of 
the newspaper writer of letters from abroad. The New 
Testament and the prophets whose souls are vibrant in 
the Sacred Book, have become greater to me than 
before. 

Therefore beside the Paul who has been turned into 
a western scholastic philosopher, beside the aristo- 
cratised, conventionalised, and modernised Paul, now 
suffering his eighth imprisonment in the paper bondage! 
of ‘Paulinism,’ I would fain set the Paul whom I think’ 
to have seen at Tarsus, Jerusalem and Damascus, in 
Antioch, Lycaonia, Galatia, Ephesus, and Corinth, and 
whose words became alive to me at night on the decks 
of Levant shipping, and to the sound of birds of passage 
winging their flight towards the Taurus—alive in their 
passionate emotion, the force of their popular appeal, 
and their prophetic depth. I mean Paul the Jew, who 
in the days of the Cesars breathed the air of the 
Mediterranean and ate the bread which he had earned by 
the labour of his own hands; the missionary whose 
dark shadow fell on the glittering marble pavement 
of the great city in the blinding glare of noon; the 
mystic devotee of Christ who, so far as he can be com- 
prehended historically at all, will be understood not as 
the incarnation of a system but as a living complex of 
inner polarities which refuse to be parcelled out—con- 
tending torces the strain of which he once alluded to 
himself in writing to the saints at Philippi :—' 

I am in a strait betwixt the two. 


I have a word to add concerning what I regard as 
an important conception strongly urged in the following 
pages. The whole development of early Christianity— 


1 Phil. 1, 28, cvvéxopar éx tav dvo. 


PREFACE TO FIRST EDITION XI 


to which Adolf Harnack has lately applied the term 
‘double gospel,’ i.e. the gospel of Jesus and the gospel 
of Jesus the Christ—appears to me to be an advance 
from the gospel of Jesus to the cult of Jesus Christ, 
that cult deriving its sustenance and its lines of direc- 
tion from the gospel of Jesus and the mystic contempla- / 
tion of Christ. This view, which regards the apostles 
as devotees of a cult (not of course to be confused with 
an established religion), seems to me to do greater 
justice to the essential nature of Primitive Christianity 
than any other that has been formulated. No other 
excludes altogether the possibility of mistaking the de- 
velopment of primitive Christianity for something in 
the main doctrinal. The emphasis which I have laid 
on the development of the gospel into the cult is nothing 
‘recent’ on my part, as William Benjamin Smith * seems 
to assume (meaning, I suppose, subsequent to the publi- 
cation of his ‘ Prechristian Jesus’). It goes back many 
years, and will even be found in my writings before the 
appearance of Smith’s book, the hypotheses and pre- 
suppositions in which, by the way, do not commend 
themselves to me. 

My sketch of Paul is founded on eight lectures 
which I delivered in German by invitation of the Olaus 
Petri Trustees at the University of Upsala in March, 
1909, and which were immediately published in a 
Swedish translation.’ 


ADOLF DEISSMANN. 


BERLIN- WILMERSDORF, 
19 July, 1911. 


1 Der Vorchristliche Jesus, 2nd Ed., Jena, 1911, p. xxvii. 


2 Paulus. Hn kultwr- och religionshistorisk skiss, Stockholm, 1910, 
2nd Ed., 1918. 


TRANSLATOR’S NOTE 


On the title page of every book by Professor Deissmann 
issued to the English-speaking public we have come to 
expect to see the words ‘Translated by Lionel R. M. 
Strachan.’ Unfortunately Mr. Strachan was unable to 
give the time necessary. to preparing a second edition of 
Paul, and I was asked to undertake it instead. 

There have been many additions and alterations, and 
these are not confined to the two considerable subjects 
mentioned in the Author’s preface, the discussion of cult. 
and mysticism, but are also to be met with in smaller 
modifications on almost every page. ‘The present is 
therefore in the main an independent translation, though 
in making it [ have constantly referred to the excellent 
translation made fourteen years ago by Mr. Strachan, 
and have not infrequently availed myself of his render- 
ings; for which help and for his courtesy to me in the 
matter I offer my hearty thanks. 

At the Author’s desire, both on the title page and 
throughout the book, the name of the Apostle stands 
alone without the prefix ‘St.’ He has been much 
impressed by the reasons given by Dr. Peake in the 
preface to his Commentary on the Bible for the omission 
of this title (op. cit., p. xiii). 

I cannot close without expressing my thanks to 
Professor Deissmann for his kindness in promptly 
answering all my questions concerning renderings, and 
for invaluable help in reading the proofs. 


WILLIAM EH. WILSON. 


WooDBROOKE, SELLY Oak, 
BIRMINGHAM, 1926. 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER I 
PAGE 
THE PROBLEM AND THE SOURCES . : : : : ] 
. 
CHAPTER II 
THe WoRrRLD oF PAUL : d : , A WAL 


CHAPTER III 


Paun THE Man : , : : : : Oa 
CHAPTER IV 

PauL THE JEW ! ’ 4 ‘ : : ; oad 
CHAPTER V 

Pavut THE CHRISTIAN : : ; : ; : AB 
CHAPTER VI 

PavuL THE CHRISTIAN (Continued). . 138 


CHAPTER VII 


PAvuL THE CHRISTIAN (Continued) . . 189 


CHAPTER VIII 


PauL THE CHRISTIAN (Continued) . : ; ei Loos 
CHAPTER IX 
PauL THE CHRISTIAN (Continued) . ; . 205 


xii 


~ 


X1V CONTENTS 
CHAPTER X 


Pau THE APOSTLE . 


CHAPTER XI 


Paut IN THE Worup’s Renicious History 


APPENDIX I 


THE PROCONSULATE OF L. Junius GALLIO 


APPENDIX II 


On THE ALTAR TO THE UNKNOWN GoD 


APPENDIX III 


Santa Croce, FrorenceE. By Orto Crusius . 


APPENDIX IV 


DIAGRAMS . 


INDICES 
I. Puaces, Persons, SuBJECTS 
II]. GREEK WorDs . 


IfI. Passages 


PAGE 


221 


253 


261 


292 


293 


301 
311 
312 


PLATES 


I. Tae Gauuio INSCRIPTION FRoM DELPHI . . Thtle page 


PAGE 
TI, FRAGMENT OF A LETTER KELATING TO ANCIENT CULT-PROPA- 


GANDA—FRONT  . ; ‘ \ : é A i 12 


(Ul. Fraament or A LETTER RELATING TO ANCIENT CULT-PROPA- 
GANDA—BACK . ‘ f : 13 


LV. PrRoBaBLE RESTORATION OF THE TEXT OF THE GALLIO 
INSCRIPTION ; i ; ; : : OR LH be 


VY. ALTAR FROM THE Hony PREcINctTS oF DEMETER IN PER- 
GAMUM—FT'ronT (1st Dedication) . . . 286 


VI. AtTaR FROM THE Hoty Precincts oF DEMETER IN PER- 
GaMuM—LEFT S1pDE (2nd Dedication) : a 1S 





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CHAPTER I 
THE PROBLEM AND THE SOURCES 


Two names contain in themselves the primitive history 
of Christianity : the names of Jesus and Paul. ak 

Jesus and Paul—these two do not stand side by 
side as first and second. [From the broadest historical 
standpoint Jesus appears as the One,’ and Paul as the 
first after the One, or—in more Pauline phraseology— 
as the first in the One. 

Consciousness of His own personality—this is the 
living force in Jesus from which proceeds that soul- 
stirring movement which has continued to work among 
mankind through the centuries down to the present 
day. This consciousness is seli-supported : Jesus stands 
in history linking heaven and earth together, but He 
stands in lonely majesty and might: He himself alone.’ 
Paul needs some foundation. What Paul is, he is in 
Christ.’ 

But compare Paul with the others. Then Paul is 
spiritually the Great Power of the Apostolic Age: he 
laboured more,* and not only laboured more, but 
created more than all the others. 

Therefore the others recede behind him, and there- 
fore the historian, as he surveys the beginnings of 
Christianity, sees Paul as first after Jesus. 


1The expression is Pauline, Rom. v. 17, 19. Cf. 1 Cor. viii. 6, 
and other places. 
2 John vi. 15, atrds povos. 
$- Phil, iv. 13. 4 1 Cor. xvet0. 
3 


mee 


4 PAUL 


Visible though it be to a great distance, the historic 
personality of Jesus is not easy for research to grasp ;. 
the personal interval is too immense, and the hiero- 
glyphics of the gospels have not all been deciphered. 
Paul stands nearer and is more easily accessible to us. 

Paul indeed is regarded to-day by many as gloomy 
as well as great. But the darkness is largely due to 
the bad lamps in our studies, and the modern con- 
demnations of the Apostle as an obscurantist who 
corrupted the simple. gospel of the Nazarene with 
harsh and difficult dogmas, are the dregs of doctrinaire 
study of Paul, mostly in the tired brains of gifted 
amateurs. 

If, however, we place the man of Tarsus in the 


} sunlight of his Anatolian home and in the clear air of 


the ancient Mediterranean world, among the simple 
people of his own social class, what before pained our 
eyes like faint and faded pencil sketches, becomes 
suddenly plastic, alive with light and shade like some 
mighty relief of ancient date. 

Not that we can completely restore this relief. We 
shall only gain fragments; but they will be important 
fragments, essential fragments, from which we can 
reconstruct, at least hypothetically, the proportions and 
lines of the whole, if we have learnt to view fragments 
not as scraps but as integral parts. ; 


That is exactly the task of the modern investigation 


of Paul; to come back from the paper Paul of our 


western libraries, from the Germanised, dogmatised, 
modernised, stilted Paul, to the historic Paul, through 
the labyrinth of the ‘ Paulinism’ of our New Testament 
Theology to gain contact once more with the actual 
Paul of ancient days. 

The research in the nineteenth century on Paul is 
both by its thoroughness and the magnitude of its 


THE PROBLEM AND THE SOURCES 5 


production one of the most imposing achievements of 
the scientific study of religion. But taken altogether it 
has been most strongly influenced by interest in Paul, 
the theologian, and in the ‘theology’ of Paul. Along- 
side the enormous discussion of literary questions, 
especially about the genuineness of the Pauline epistles 
and their relationship to the ‘ Acts of the Apostles,’ it 
is chiefly the so-called ‘System’ of Pauline Theology,’ 
or ‘Paulinism’ that three generations have wrestled 
over.” 

But with this doctrinaire direction the study of 
Paul has gone further and further astray. It has 
placed one factor which is certainly not absent from 
Paul, but is in no way the historically characteristic, 
theological reflection, in the foreground, and has only 
too often undervalued the really characteristic traits of 
the man, the prophetic power of his religious experience, 
and the energy of his practical religious lie. The 
doctrinaire study of Paul has left, moreover, a great 
riddle unsolved: the open question how far the 
‘Paulinism’ of its discovering was the seat of those 


1 Naturally much turns on the question, what one means by 
System; no one should overlook the carefully weighed sentences of 
Arthur 8. Peake in The Quintessence of Paulinism, Manchester, 
1917-1918. 

2 A remarkable scientific parallel to the doctrinaire study of Paul 
is the doctrinaire study of Plato in the nineteenth century, cf. Paul 
Wendland, Die Aufgaben der platonischen Forschung, Nachrichten der 
K. Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften zu Gottingen, Geschiaftliche 
Mitteilungen, 1910, 2 Heft: ‘It may now confidently be said that 
the comprehensive exposition of the system, however indispensable it 
may be on didactic grounds, is, from the scientific point of view, a 
wrongly stated and therefore an insoluble problem’ (p. 97). ‘A 
system can be worked out with certainty only in the case of thinkers 
who have employed the form of the systematic didactic treatise. The 
same problem must fail, or is only approximately soluble in the case 
of Plato, Paul, Luther (p. 98), and Goethe, whose writings are not in 
the least adapted to systematic exposition’ (p. 99). There follows 
then a polemical protest against Zeller’s presentation of Plato. 


6 | PAUL 


vital forces which must have had a missionary effect, 
because they carried away the simple people of the 
Mediterranean world. I am afraid that the people of 
Iconium, Thessalonica and Corinth would all of them 
have shared the fate of EKutychus of Troas,' if they had 
been compelled to listen to the paragraphs of modern 
‘Paulinism ’ dealing with ‘ Christology,’ ‘ Hamartiology,’ 
and ‘ Eschatology.’ 

Paul at his best belongs not to Theology, but to 
Religion. 

Paul, of course, had been a pupil of theologians and 
had learnt to employ theological methods; he even 
employed them as a Christian missionary. But for all 
that the tent-maker of Tarsus ought not to be classed 
along with Origen, Thomas Aquinas and Schleier- 
macher: his place is rather with the herdsman of 
Tekoa, and with Tersteegen, the ribbon-weaver of 
/Miilheim. Paul the theologian looks backward to 
Rabbinism. Paul the religious genius gazes into the 
future history of the world. 


Paul is essentially first and foremost a hero of 
religion. The theological element in him is secondary. 
naiveté in him is stronger than reflection; mysticism 
stronger than dogmatism ; Christ means more to him 
than Christology, God more than the doctrine of God. 
He is far more a man of prayer, a witness, a confessor 
and a prophet, than a learned exegete and close think- 
ing scholastic. 

To show that this is so, is, I consider, the object of 
this sketch. There is to be no attempt to plumb the 
depths of the manifold problems concerning the exter- 
nal facts of Paul’s biography. Even the questions of 


1 Acts xx. 9 ff. The excellent Hutychus, a warning to all who 
sleep in church, must certainly have been one of the very few people 
who could manage to fall asleep while Paul was speaking. 


THE PROBLEM AND THE SOURCES 7 


chronology * and literary criticism must give place to 
the chief task of displaying the character of the man in 
the light of social and religious history. 


For the task so set, the question of sources becomes 
comparatively simple. P 
_ In the wider sense of the word the sources for dis- 
playing the character of Paul in the light of social and 
religious history are the documents of the ancient 
Mediterranean world at the time of the great religious 
change. KHspecially valuable is the testimony to the 
social environment of Paul presented to us in the 
records of the middle and lower classes? to be gleaned 
from the great mass of recently discovered letters and 
papyri. 

Sources in the narrower sense are primitive Christian 
documents, first and foremost Paul’s own letters, then 
the Book of Acts by Luke, but also everything else 
which in any way bears a reflection of the personality 
of Paul. I think chiefly of the Johannine writings in 
which there pulses the warm life-blood of Paul’s 
devotion to Christ. John is the oldest and the greatest 
interpreter of Paul.’ 

The problem of sources, in so far as it applies to 
the letters left by Paul, has become complicated, not 


1'The chief chronological problem only is discussed in the 
appendix. 

Compare my book, Licht vom Osten. Das Neue Testament und 
die neuenteckten Texte der hellenistisch-romischen Welt, 4. vollig neu 
bearbeitete Aufl., Tubingen, 1923. An English translation of this 
edition is in preparation and will be issued by Messrs. Hodder & 
Stoughton, Ltd., under the title Light from the Ancient Kast. 

3JIn these lines is indicated the result of a great and important 
piece of research, which has busied me for decades. Critics who 
think they can set aside my thesis with a superior wave of the hand, 
would be better advised to test it by carefully working over the 
material themselves. 


8 PAUL 


indeed by its own means, but through a fatal vicious 
circle in which the study of Paul has often moved. 
Because the personality of Paul has been transferred 
from the naive to the premeditated, from the religious 
to the theological, his letters also have been transposed 
from the unliterary to the literary class, and by the help 
of these literary letters the attempt has been made 
to represent the Apostle as a literary man and a 
dogmatist. 

The letters of Paul thus share with their writer the 
fate of being frequently misjudged. I do not refer to 
single cases of exegetical misunderstanding, but to a 
false valuation as a whole. Their intimate peculiar 
character—their soul—has been misunderstood. They 
have been regarded as treatises, as pamphlets in the 
form of letters, in any case as literary productions, as 
the theological works of the primitive Chrisnes dog- 
matic theologian. 


¥ This momentous misunderstanding, that the 
Apostle’s letters have been rooted up and laid in the 
herbarium, is to some extent excused by the fact that 
in Paul’s time in cultured circles the letter was actually 
employed as a form of literary production.’ The 
literary letter, to which to distinguish it from the real 
letter we shall give the technical name ‘ Epistle,’ was 
throughout the whole of the later period of antiquity 
one of the favourite forms of literary art. We find the 
epistle not only amongst Greeks and Romans, but also | 
amongst the Hellenistic Jews; it was afterwards much 
favoured by the Christian /iterati of the ancient Church 
and even to the present day plays a great role in our 
modern literature. But it is in essential characteristics 


1 For what follows cf. the discussion ‘Prolegomena, to the Biblical 
Letters and Epistles’ in my Bible Studies, 2nd Ed., Edinburgh, 1903, _ 
pp. 1-59. 


THE PROBLEM AND THE SOURCES 9 


something other than the letter, and if we wish to form 
a just historical estimate of Paul’s letters we must seek 
to understand them as unliterary letters as distinguished 
from literary epistles. 

What then is a Letter? And what is an Epistle ? 

A letter serves separated people instead of con- 
versation. Jt is an ‘I’ that speaks to a ‘you.’ 
Individual and personal, only intended for the person 
or persons addressed, it is not destined for publication,’ 
even by custom and right it is protected from publica- 
tion. It is private. The real letter is unliterary, just 
as is a receipt or a lease. It concerns only the one who 
has written it, and the one who is to open it, whether 
the addressee intended be a single person or a family or 
other circle of persons. Its contents are as varied as 
life itself. The letter may be trifling, commonplace, 
passionate, kindly, trivial, wearisome, and it may reflect 
human fate or family tragedy, moving the souls of 
writer and recipient to mountain heights or to abysmal 
depths. 

It is otherwise with the epistle. It is a literary 
artistic form, like the drama, the epigram, the dialogue. 


1 The vexed question, letter or epistle, finally turns on the intention 
of the writer. Heinrich Wolfflin has therefore rightly distinguished 
the unliterary letters of Albrecht Diirer from his ‘books,’ using almost 
the same formule that I have used in regard to Paul: ‘In addition to 
the books, fragmentary writings have also been presented, which were 
never intended for publication, letters and diaries .. .’ (Albrecht 
Diirers schrifilicher Nachlass ... , edited by Ernst Heidrich, with 
an introduction by Heinrich Wolfflin, Berlin, 1918, p. 359). That 
great numbers of the real letters of great men have later on, like 
Paul’s letters, come to be classed as literature, cannot alter their 
original nature. All literatures contain documents which in origin 
and intention were unliterary. Indeed it might even be said, the 
more of such unliterary developed documents that a literature has 
rescued, the higher it itself stands and by so much less does it as a 
whole give the impression of being a manufactured and only literary 
product. 


10 PAUL 


The epistle has only the outer form of a letter; apart 
from that it is the opposite of the real letter. It intends 
to interest and influence a public, or even the public. 
Since to be published is in its very nature, it uses the 
personal note only to preserve the illusion that it is a 
‘letter.’ If the letter is private, the epistle is a market- 
able article. It does not go forth to the world as a 
single sheet of papyrus like the letter, but from the 
very first it is reduplicated by the slaves of the book- 
seller in the great city; it is intended to be bought, 
read and discussed in Alexandria, in Ephesus, Athens 
and Rome. 

Thus the epistle is distinguished from the letter 
just as the historical drama is distinguished from a 


piece of actual history, or a Platonic dialogue from | 


confidential conversation; just as the conventional 
unctuous Life of a saint differs from the account in 
which by word or pen the eye-witnesses picture to their 
co-religionists the martyrdom, with phrases halting from 
emotion, or from the protocol which gives in the 
briefest and most businesslike manner the details of 
the action against the confessor,’ without a thought of 
producing literature. Epistle and letter are dis- 
tinguished like art and nature, like the conventionalised 
and the natural growth, like the premeditated and the 
naive. 

Certainly there are midway between letter and 
epistle aiso mixed types, letter-like epistles and epis- 
tolary letters, that is to say naive epistles, lightly 
dashed off, and unnatural, tortured letters lacking in 
naturalness and originality. But the existence of these 


1For this distinction (also for the understanding of the gospel 
accounts of the passion) cf. the exceedingly important contributions 
of Ulrich Wilcken, Zum alexandrinischen Antisemitismus. Abbh. der 
philos.-hist. Klasse der Kgl. Sachs. Ges. der Wissenschaften, Bd. 27, 
Nr. 23, Leipzig, 1909. 


ae 


THE PROBLEM AND THE SOURCES 11 


intermediate species does not set aside the fact of, and 
the importance of, the distinction between letter and 
epistle. And the question in particular still remains 
to be settled: in which of the two groups are the letters 
of Paul to be placed ? 

Here the ancient world offers us a wealth of material 
for comparison. eal unliterary letters have, for ex- 
ample, come down to us from Epicurus and Cicero ; 
but besides these we have in hundreds of examples 
actual original private letters written in the Hellenistic- 
Roman period by Egyptian men and women on papyri 
and potsherds.* There is no room for doubt that these 
are real letters, and their formal peculiarities, such as 
preescript, religious wishes at the beginning, formulee of 
greeting and other details have made possible quite a 
new insight into the ancient letter. 

On the other hand, we have a wealth of literary 
letters in the prose epistles for example of Lysias, 
Aristotle, and Seneca, as also of the poetical epistles of 
Horace and Ovid; and a point of especial importance 
for our problem of sources is that even before Paul the 
epistle form had entered the literature of Hellenistic 
Judaism, as the examples of the Epistle of Aristeas 
which deals with the origin of the Septuagint and a 
pamphlet against the worship of idols, the self-styled 
‘Epistle of Jeremiah,’ indicate. 


It would therefore in itself be not in the least 
impossible that Paul also might have written epistles, 
and should therefore be classed as a man of literature 
—the more so, because in the New Testament alongside 
the letters of Paul there are other texts which appear 
to be letters, yet are undoubtedly to be described as 


1 Cf. the selection in Licht vom Osten, 4th edition, pp. 119-1938, and 
the other collections of letters there (p. 119) noted. 


12 PAUL 


literary epistles : perhaps the clearest case is the Epistle 
of James. 

And yet, when once the significance of the dis- 
tinction between unliterary and literary production 1s 
known and acknowledged, there can be no doubt of the 
unliterary character of Paul’s letters. Unfortunately 
we are all far too deeply embedded in the merely 
literary, and even Christianity, become literary, has far 
too great a respect for rows of folios. Therefore the 
liberation of Paul’s letters from the literary class is 
easily felt by one and another as a form of depreciation. 
And for all that, through this very liberation, the 
historical (and religious) value of those pages is extra- 
ordinarily increased. Here also we may assert ‘ That 
a quite unusual power of expressing character at first 
hand dwells in these things’? 7 

A mere comparison of the formule of Paul’s letters 
with the corresponding peculiarities of the Pa'yprus- 
letters of the same time makes the unliterary character 
of the Pauline documents clear. That these texts were 
the outcome of a definite situation, which could not be 
repeated, and, referring only to this peculiar situation, 
are not productions of literary art but of real life, is 
obvious on a more exact interpretation of the letters 
themselves. In some cases this is clearer, in others — 
not so striking, though in the end not to be gainsaid. 
Documents unfold themselves to us, documents of the 
early apostolic cure of souls, intimate between man and 
man, relics of the propaganda of religion, of the mis- 
sionary work of the Apostles, of the guidance of their 
churches, ‘survivals’ in the sense of the technical 
language of historical research.? Paul wrote these 


1 Wolfflin in the work already quoted on Diirer’s unliterary letters. 
2 A heathen parallel of exceptional value has lately come to light. 
The letter (see translation and explanation in Licht vom Osten, 
p. 121 ff.) of Zoilos, the worshipper of Serapis, to the Egyptian 


BOAT IAL 








FRAGMENTS OF A LutreR RELATING TO ANCIENT CULT-PROPAGANDA, 
(Letter of Zoilos, the worshipper of Serapis, to the Egyptian Finance-Minister, 


Apollonius, Alexandria, 258-257 p.c. A Papyrus fragment from Philadelphia 
(Faiyim). Size of the original 30 x 31°5 cm. (i.e., approximately 10 x 103 inches), 
now in the museum at Cairo. Reproduced from Deissmann’s Licht vom Osten, 


4th ed., p. 406.) (Front. 
ront, 


(For Adolf Deissmann’s Paul, 2nd ed.) 
[To face page 12, 


PEATH SLI 





FRAGMENTS OF A LETTER RELATING TO ANCIENT CULT-PROPAGANDA. 


(The letter of Zoilos. Alexandria, 258-257 B.c, From Deissmann’s Licht vom Osten, 
4th ed., p. 408.) 


(Back.) 
(To face page 18. 





THE PROBLEM AND THE SOURCES 13 


pages, or in many (perhaps in most) cases’ dictated 
them to the pen of a companion,’ amid the storm and 
stress of his wandering life, which was so rich in 
deeply-moving experiences. He then sent them in a 
single copy by the hand of trusty messengers to the 
place of their destination over land and sea, from 
Ephesus to Corinth, from Corinth to Rome, and to 
Ephesus, without the great world or even Christendom 
as a whole knowing at the time of their existence. 
That after centuries some of these confidential 
letters would still be in existence Paul neither 
intended nor anticipated. His glowing faith never 
reckoned on coming centuries. Spanning apostolic 
Christendom, like the sultry sky of thunderous 
weather, was the hope that the present age of the 
world was hastening to its close, and that the new 
world of the kingdom of God was just about to 
appear. Such a hope does not thirst for earthly fame 


Finance Minister, Apollonios (258-257 B.c.). Here also we have not 
in the least a literary production, but a ‘survival’ of religious propa- 
ganda. Here I give a reproduction in reduced size of the whole 
unparalleled document (front and back on Plates II. and III.) and for 
the rest refer the reader to my commentary in the above mentioned 
work. . | 

19 Thess. iii. 17;(Gal. vi. 11;) Col. iv. 18; 1 Cor. xvi. 21; 
(2 Cor. x. 12); Rom. xvi. 22. In all these places either the 
amanuensis is mentioned or Paul stresses the fact that he writes the 
last words of the letter with his own hand. 

2 That these letters were spoken letters is a point of view which 
has not yet received sufficient attention. One ought to ask in many 
places: Was this spoken loudly or softly, did Paul smile when he said 
it, or was he quivering with passion, did he strengthen or weaken the 
sense by some quick gesture? All questions that at first sight seem 
unanswerable, yet by the penetrating co-operative work of judicious 
interpreters some approach to answers no doubt can be found. Thus, 
too, one may much more easily learn to distinguish the different types 
of Paul’s spoken style, from the simple businesslike style right up to 
the psalmlike and psalm-making fervour of the religious confession of 
faith. 


14 PAUL 


of authorship, it reaches out longingly after the new, 
the heavenly. 

It was to prepare for this new thing that Paul was 
working, and the letters he sent out also served this 
-end directly or indirectly. Their subject is always 
problems of the individual soul or of the Christian 
community in a definite peculiar situation. The letters 
are simply the substitute for conversation by word of 
mouth, and, as has been already pointed out, it is of 
great importance to think of them as spoken (dictated) 
and to seek to reproduce the modulations of their 
living, unliterary words, so as to discover where Paul 
is smiling, where he is angry, where, to the horror of 
his later Atticist commentators, he falls halting 
into anacolutha, or where prophetic fervour wings his 
words. Paul wishes to console, to reprove, to punish, 
to strengthen ; he defends himself against his enemies, 
settles questions in doubt, speaks of his experiences 
and intentions, adds greetings and messages of greet- 
ing; all this, too, mostly without any careful arrange- 
ment, unconstrainedly passing from one thing to the 
other, often indeed jumping. The longer letters, too, 
show clearly the often abrupt change of mood while he 
was dictating.’ 


Some of Paul’s letters have certainly been lost. 
The Corinthians, for example, allowed Pauline letters, 
for which we would gladly give in exchange to-day the 
whole of the polemical literature of our theological 
journalists, to be destroyed,’ and that must have been 


1On this point see Hrich Stange, Diktierpausen in den Paulusbriefen, 
Zeitschrift fiir N.T. Wissenschaft, 18 (1917), p. 109 ff., and (reference 
from W. Michaelis) HE. Iliff Robson, Composition and Dictation in N.T. 
Books. The Journal of Theological Studies, vol. 18, July, 1917, 
p. 288 f. 

2—In 1 Cor. v. 9 ff. and 2 Cor. ii. 3 f., vii. 8 ff., letters of Paul are 
named, whose contents can in part be reconstructed. A letter from 
the Corinthians to Paul has also been lost (1 Cor. vii. 1). 


THE PROBLEM AND THE SOURCES 15 


the fate of others of Paul’s letters also, even in ancient 
times. 

Be that as it may, after the Apostle’s death, as 
people began to gather together scattered leaves from 
his hand and to copy them, it was possible still to 
rescue more than a dozen fairly comprehensive letters 
of Paul. And gradually, although from the first 
unliterary, this collection began to attain literary 
standing, they even became a part of the canonical 
Corpus of the Holy Scriptures of Christendom. And 
thus it is that the letters of Paul have come into our 
possession with the venerable halo of canonical dignity. 
It is asif ancient precious stones were given to us in on 
costly setting; the setting is so rich that our attention 
is diverted from the stones themselves. but take away 
the setting, and the diamonds will only shine the more 
clearly in their own true brilliance. 

To regard Paul’s letters as unliterary takes nothing 
essential from them, rather it restores to them their 
original fire. And whoever has seen the sacred flame 
glowing in these jewels has noticed that they are 
genuine precious stones. Covered with dust and dis- 
figured with doctrinaire additions, several letters of 
Paul.appeared unpauline ; and many an investigator, 
led to questioning because of the immense contrasts in 
their spiritual values, has rejected a part of the letters 
as not genuine. 

If the non-literary character of Paul’s letters is 
fully considered and they are continually compared 
with the undoubtedly genuine confidential letters of 
other great men (some of them just as rich in con- 
trasts) all foundation for most of the objections to the 
genuineness of individual Pauline letters will be re- 
moved. is 

Here and there the delusion is still current that a_ 
Biblical scholar’s scientific reliability is to be assessed 


16 PAUL 


according to the number of his critical verdicts of ‘ not 
genuine. It is as if the fame of Bentley had made 
many adopt false standards, and the extant letters of 
Paul have innocently had to suffer over again in the 
nineteenth century a good part of the martyrdom of the 
historic Paul :— 


Thrice was I beaten with rods, once was I stoned, thrice have 
I suffered shipwreck.! 


The common notes of interrogation made in the study, 
while perhaps applicable to literary epistles, are almost 
always unilluminating in the case of unliterary letters ; 
I have especially in mind the second letter to the Thes- 
salonians and the so-called letter to the Ephesians. 
Difficulties remain only with regard to the epistles to 
Timothy and Titus, and perhaps even here they are 
not so great as some specialists think. In these letters 
what seems conventionalised, stiff and unletter-like, is 
perhaps in part an inheritance taken over by Paul from 
the communal experience of Hellenistic Judaism and 
only slightly adapted to his purpose, in part post- 
Pauline addition. As these letters, however, give but 
little characteristic material for our task of displaying 
the character of the Apostle Paul in the light of social 
and religious history, it 1s not necessary in discussing 
sources to enter upon the problem of their genuineness 
—a question upon which I have as yet reached no final 
conclusion.” | 

Other difficulties, such for example as are presented 
by the letters of the imprisonment, may perhaps be 
made easier by a revision of old ways of putting 

12 Cor. xi. 28 ff. 

2TIn the following pages I shall only quote them in cases where 
they confirm impressions already made by the certainly genuine 
letters, or in illustration of typical facts of Paul’s world. For the 
study of the Pastoral Epistles the original work of P. N. Harrison is 
of extraordinary value: The Problem of the Pastoral Epistles, London, 
1921. 


THE PROBLEM AND THE SOURCES 17 


questions. It is, to mention only one case, by no 
means impossible to place the letters of the imprison- 
ment altogether or in part in an imprisonment at 
Ephesus, or in several periods of imprisonment in 
Asia." 


1This hypothesis, put forward by me in 1897 (cf. Licht vom Osten, 
4th Hd., p. 201) has since then been carried further by a great number 
of specialists and is gradually gaining assent. Cf. M. Albertz, Ueber 
die Abfassung des Philipperbriefes des Paulus zu Ephesus, Theol. 
Studien u. Kritiken, 1910, p. 551 ff.; Benjamin W. Robinson, An 
Ephesian Imprisonment of Paul, Journal of Biblical Theology, vol. 29, 
part ii, (1910), p. 181 ff.; Friedrich Westberg, Zur Newtestament- 
lichen Chronologie und Golgathas Ortlage, Leipzig, 1911, p. 84 ff.; 
Kirsopp Lake, The Critecal Problems of the Epistle to the Philippians, 
Expositor, June, 1914, p. 481 ff; Ernest W. Burch, Was Paul in 
Prison in Ephesus ? Bibliotheca Sacra, July, 1914; Ludwig Albrecht, 
Die Briefe des N.T. und die Offenbarung des Johannes, Bremen, 1914, 
p. 158 f.; Benjamin W. Bacon, Again the Hphesian Imprisonment of 
Paul, Expositor, March, 1915, p. 235 ff.; EH. W. Winstanley, Pauline 
Letters from an Ephesian Prison, Expositor, June, 1915, p. 481 ff. ; 
M. Jones, The Epistles of the Captivity: where were they written ? 
Expositor, Oct., 1915, p. 289 ff.; Paul Feine, Die Abfassung des 
Philipperbriefes in Ephesus, Beitrage zur Forderung christlicher 
Theologie XX., Giitersloh, 1916. Cf. also his Hinleitwng in das Newe 
Testament, 2nd Ed., Leipzig, 1918, p. 142 ff, 3rd Hd., 1923, p. 148 ff. ; 
C. R. Bowen, Are Paul’s Prison Letters from Ephesus? American: 
Journal of Theology, 1920, p. 112 ff, 277 ff.; J. J. Woldendorp, 
Nieuwe Theol. Studien 3 (1920), p. 147 ff.; Heinrich Appel, 
Hinleitung in das Neue Testament, Leipzig, 1922, p. 48 ffi; P. L. 
Couchoud, Revue de Histoire des religious, 1923, p. 8 ff.; W. Tom, 
Heeft Paulus te Hfeze gevangen gezeten ? in Geref. Th. Tijdschrift, 
Bd. 24, 1923-1924, pp. 451-460, 500-513; F. Hielscher dates the 
epistles to the Philippians, Colossians and Philemon from an 
Hphesian imprisonment in orschungen zur Geschichte des Ap. Paulus, 
Cottbus, 1925, p. 92. The finely balanced Excursus at the end of the 
new Philipperkommentar by Martin Dibelius (Lietzmanns Handbuch, 
11, 2nd Ed., Tiibingen, 1925) is also important, p. 75 f., cf. also p. 55; 
In Otto Schmitz ‘Neutest. Forschungen’ there recently appeared : 
Wilhelm Michaelis, Die Gefangenschaft des Paulus in Ephesus und das 
Itinerar des Timotheus. Untersuchung zur Chronologie des Paulus und 
der Paulusbriefe, Giitersloh, 1925. I have not yet been able to look 
into some of the studies that have appeared since 1914. I have also 

2 


18 PAUL 


The chief evidence for the essential genuineness of 
the letters of Paul that have come down to us is the 
circumstance, impossible to invention, that each letter 
portrays him as the same character, each time in a new 
light and giving a new impression, or even with great 
changes of impression in the same letter. It is no 
unalterable cold marble statue of ‘Paulinism’ that we 
see each time; rather it is ever the living man, Paul, 
whose very speech and gesture we hear and see, here 
smiling gentle as a father and tenderly coaxing to win — 
the hearts of his foolish children—then, thundering 
and lightening in passionate anger, like Luther, with 
biting irony and sharp sarcasm on his lips. Another 
time his eye shines with experience of the seer and his 
mouth overflows as he witnesses to the grace he has 
known, or his thought loses itself in the tortuous maze 
of a religious problem, and his soul trembles under a 
load of trouble, or he draws from the harp of David a 
gracious psalm of thanksgiving. It is ever the same 
Paul in ever new attitude, and where apparent contra- 
dictions can be noticed, even there it is the same man, 
Paul, with all the polar contrasts of his nature, to which 
the words might be applied: 


. no book excogitate am I 
But man, made up of contrariety. 


He who would most easily learn to know the in- 
timate character of Paul’s letters must not begin with 


dealt with one particular point: Zur ephesinischen Gefangenschaft des 
Apostels Paulus, in Anatolian Studies, presented to Sir William 
Mitchell Ramsay, edited by W. H. Buckler and W. M. Calder, Man- 
chester, 1923, p. 121-127. Further, cf. also Otto Stahlin, Die altchristl. 
griech. Litteratur (8.-A. aus Handbuch der Klass. Alierlumswissen- 
schaft, 6th Hid.), Miinchen, 1924, p. 1144, and the extraordinarily acute 
Pauline Readjusiments by T. W. Liynfi Davies, Expositor, June, 1924, 
p. 446 ff, especially p. 449 f. and 456. Davies puts Hphesians, 
Colossians and Philemon (not Philippians) after Ephesus. 


THE PROBLEM AND THE SOURCES 19 


the Epistle to the Romans, which now stands at the 
head of the Corpus Paulinum. Romans, which, be- 
cause of the circumstances of its composition, is the 
least letter-like and the most epistolary letter of the 
Apostle, has, owing to its prominent place in the 
canon, and through the enormous influence—even 
literary influence—which it has thereby exerted, 
tended greatly to strengthen the tendency to regard 
Paul’s letters in general as literary epistles. But it 
is not fitted to be the starting-point for the formation 
of our conclusions. 

It is better to begin with the Epistle to Philemon. 
This is the shortest, as it is also the most letter-like of 
Paul’s letters, written upon a single sheet of papyrus, 
just like numbers of Greek letters of the same date now 
known to us from Egypt.’ In it there is nothing of 
the doctrinaire and literary. Jf one regards this 
precious leaf as a tract on the attitude of Christianity 
to slavery, he misses his way not only in historical 
criticism but also in human taste. It is turning people 
into ideas and making a book out of a confidential 
letter : Paul is depersonalised into Christianity and the 
slave Onesimus has become ‘slavery.’ Besides, every- 
thing is really so perfectly simple. The slave, Onesimus, 
had run away from his master, Philemon, who lived 


1$ee below p. 23. 

2A good parallel as regards form is for example the letter of the 
soldier Athenodoros to his ‘Sister’ Selbeina (Egypt, beginning of third 
century A.D.), in the collection of papyri of the Neutestament. Seminar 
at Berlin, published in Griechische Texte aus Aegypten, edited by Paul 
M. Meyer, I. Papyri des Neutestamentlichen Seminars der Universitat 
Berlin, II. Ostraka der Sammlung Deissmann, Berlin, 1916, No. 20 
(p. 82 ff.) with facsimile. The letter is almost to a line the same 
length as Philemon and gives a clear picture of what one of the 
smaller Pauline epistles must have looked like outwardly. Compare 
the facsimile in above-mentioned work. 


20 PAUL 


at Colosse in the interior of Asia Minor. In the 
great port of Ephesus, which could be reached in a few 
days journey’ he no doubt hoped to be able to hide, 
but was there probably arrested,’ and in prison learnt 
to know Paul who was, so I think, at that time also 
imprisoned in Ephesus. Paul converted this man to 
the Gospel and sent the runaway back to his master 
(possibly having undertaken to the prison authorities 
to pay his ransom).’ The little letter, which he gave 
him to take with him, pleaded for forgiveness and 
friendly reception for the ‘unprofitable.’* This letter 
is an instantaneous picture of the primitive Christian 
cure of souls; the whole charm of a characteristic 
personality is poured out over these few Pauline lines: 
Christian feeling is combined with Greek refinement and 
the tact of aman of the world. Though a prisoner, Paul 
writes with perfect quietness,’ a happy cheerfulness 


1'To-day one can reach Ephesus from Colosse in one day, travelling 
on horseback, or in case of need by rail; in 1909 I myself made 
the journey from Ephesus to Laodicea, which lies close to Colosse, 
and back in two days (March 18th and 15th). 

2 Runaway slaves were not infrequently followed with a warrant 
for arrest, and the authorities were obliged to try to imprison them. 
We still possess in Paris Papyrus No. 10 an original warrant for the 
arrest of two runaway slaves out of the time of the Ptolemies (Notices et 
extratts, 18,2, p.177 ff.). A large reward is offered for the capture of 
the runaways, and the authorities are to give information as soon as 
they hear where they are hiding. 

> Cf. in Licht vom Osten, 4th Hid., p. 281 f., the explanation quoted 
from O. Kiger. 

4So Paul says in Philemon 11 playing upon the name Onesimus 
(= profitable). 

° For the contrast read the woeful whining captive letter of the 
imprisoned Hgyptian of the time of Ptolemy, a particularly valuable 
parallel to Paul’s imprisonment letters (in the Flinders Petrie Papyri 
III, No. 35a and 0 and 36a). Contact with the outer world was un- 
doubtedly easier for the prisoner in those days than it is in our day. 
Compare the smuggled letters offering bribes mentioned in Chapter 
II., also Matt. xi. 2 and xxv. 36, and the prisons of Anatolia to-day: a 


THE PROBLEM AND THE SOURCES 21 


beams from his eye, he opens the treasures of his 
confidence, he appeals to brotherly feeling and to the 
love of the Saviour and knows that these powers are 
irresistible. Here there is no trace of triviality in 
dealing with a matter in itself trivial, no word is wasted, 
a strong, and yet elastic soul reveals itself to a con- 
fidential friend. 

The little letter which has come to us as the six- 
teenth chapter of Romans, was written in a similar 
frame of mind. This leaf is most probably originally 
not an organic part of Romans, but a separate letter of 
the Apostle to a Christian congregation in Ephesus, 
recommending to them Phoebe, a Christian woman of 
Cenchreae. Here also Paul speaks confidentially in a 
truly letter-like way. Like many a papyrus letter of 
that time and numerous letters of the South and East 
even to-day, this contains almost nothing but separate 
oreetings, but each greeting has its own personal tone, 
and the whole is full of allusions to common work and 
common suffering. Paul, the great martyr and the 
great worker looks out upon us from this single leaf of 
a letter, the Paul who knew men and was the living 
centre of his own circle. Then in one place there 
breaks through glowing indignation against those who 
corrupt the Gospel, and at the end his faithful friends 
hear a full chord from the Harp of Paul, the Psalmist. 


visit to the jail at Konia (Iconium) on March 6th, 1909, showed us 
very plainly what a large amount of intercourse the prisoners had 
through the grating in the door with their friends who had come to 
see them. Thus it is understandable that we possess quite a number 
of other letters written in imprisonment: especially interesting are 
those that come from imprisonment in a temple, for example the 
letter of the Egyptian Ptolemaios to Damoxenos (Serapeum 160 B.c.), 
contained in the Paris Papyrus No. 51, and newly published by U. 
Wilcken in Archiv fiir Papyrusforschung, 6, p. 204 ff. <A collection of 
prison letters from antiquity would be a charming piece of work. 
The oldest is probably that published by A. Ungnad from the time 
of Hammurapi (Cp. D.L.Z., 1915, Sp. 353). 


22 PAUL 


First and Second Thessalonians are also genuinely 
letters. The first especially is full of moving allusions 
to personal experiences. On the whole written with a 
certain quietness, in spite of polemical expressions, they 
let us recognise what we may call the average type of 
Paul’s letters. 

The beginning of Galatians is entirely dictated in a 
spirit of holy indignation. It is understandable how 
this letter with its lightning and thunderbolts especially 
captivated our German Reformer. Paul here had to 
justify himself before the Christians of Galatia deep in 
the heart of Anatolia against wicked slanderers, who 
were trying to rob him of the confidence of these young 
believers by casting doubt upon his Apostolate and 
stigmatising his Christianity, free from legal bonds, as 
apostasy. But for all that Paul writes no dogmatic 
treatise, but a letter of fiery defence, in which he after- 
wards also strikes other notes. With the whole fervour 
of his heart he woos the Galatians back to their old 
love. The character of the Apostle in its most diverse 
sides is clearly stamped upon it. 

First Corinthians begins much more quietly than 
Galatians. Paul expresses himself about a number of 
abuses in the Corinthian Church, and thus the letter 
gives us a deep insight into the wisdom of its author in 
the cure of souls. Here also there is no lack of sharp 
polemic, corroding irony and prophetic indignation, but | 
in general Paul is more restrained. He spares the 
church, where he can, and he appreciates its high and 
noble witness. In the midst of the desolating confusion 
of the Corinthian parties, the strife about the denarius, 
the quarrel between the enlightened and the weak 
Christians of the Hellenic-Roman capital, the noise of 
ecstatic fanaticism, he brings in a sublime figure, so 
mighty, so noble and chaste that it would have been 
worthy a Phidias, Agape, Love, which reveals the 


THE PROBLEM AND THE SOURCES 23 


deepest mystery of the nature of God and of His Son, 
and binds the sons of God together in a great brother- 
hood. And after that Paul makes his confession of 
faith in the living Christ, which deeply moves us by its 
fervour, and witnesses to his hope of immortality. Then 
changing the great for the small he begins chatting 
about his plans and his cares. 

Perhaps the most personal of the ‘greater’ Pauline 
epistles is Second Corinthians. It is as a whole also 
the least well known to us, just because it is so entirely 
letter-like, so entirely a personal confession, full of 
allusions which we cannot now fully understand. Paul 
begins in deep emotion ; for God has once again graci- 
ously saved him out of a terrible risk of death. There- 
fore the beginning of this letter is filled with inexpressible 
thankfulness ; but this tone is varied by others, especially 
by a sharp polemic against legal-minded Christians, who 
also in Corinth had scattered their seed of slander. 
Again, as in Galatians, Paul lays bare his inner and 
outer life for his Christian brethren to see, and especially 
Chapters XI. and XII. are documents of irreplaceable 
value for the Apostle’s history. 

The least personal of the longer letters of Paul is 
Romans. But even it is, if the intention of the author 
is the deciding factor, a real letter, not a literary epistle. 
No doubt there are lines in it which could also be in an 
epistle, and it might be called an epistolary letter. But 
in spite of that it is a letter and no book. The idea 
that it is a compendium of Paulinism, in which the 
Apostle set down his dogmatic theology and ethics, that 
characteristic idea beloved of many a Pauline scholar of 
earlier day, at the very least implies great misunder- 
standing. Undoubtedly Paul wanted to teach the 
Roman Christians and he did it in part through the 
means of contemporary theology. But he does not 
contemplate the literary public of his day as his readers, 


24 PAUL 


nor yet Christendom in general and later generations ; 
he addresses himself rather to a little group of people 
living in one of the more modest quarters of Rome, of 
whose existence the general public was scarcely even 
aware. It is unlikely that copies of the letter were sent 
to the assemblies of Christians in Ephesus, Antioch and 
Jerusalem: he only sent this message to Rome. ‘That 
this letter is less animated by personal expressions than 
the other Pauline epistles, is explained by the circum- 
stances of its writing: Paul was writing to a church 
not yet personally known to him. The small space 
given to personal details does not suggest that Romans 
has an epistolary-literary character, but is the natural 
consequence of the letter-like unliterary situation in 
which it was written. 

The situation was similar at the time of writing the 
letter directed to Colosse and Loadicea, in the valley of 
the Lycus, the so-called ‘ Epistle to the Ephesians’ sent 
at the same time as the letter to Philemon. These 
churches also Paul did not yet know through personal 
acquaintance, theretore here also the personal element 
is less prominent than the objective. The peculiar 
solemnity of the language is striking—a solemnity of 
tone suggesting both liturgical worship’ and meditation, 
which moreover is not unknown in certain parts of 
other letters of Paul. As regards the contents, the 
sreat development of Christ-mysticism, elsewhere only 
referred to because already well known, is unmistak- 
able. A great part of the critical difficulties, found in 
the contents of this epistle, disappears when Paul 
becomes known to us also from the undoubtedly 
‘genuine ’ letters as the great Christ-mystic.? 


1 Cf. below, p. 106 f. 

* The old theses, so greatly used in discussions about genuineness, 
that the teaching of the Apostle was contained in the four chief 
epistles (the very phrase is itself a petitio principii) was an act of 


THE PROBLEM AND THE SOURCES 25 


Philippians,* on the other hand, is thoroughly letter- 
like and most strongly personal. It was directed to a 
church especially closely connected with the Apostle, 
which had just given the prisoner a great proof of its 
love. Paul thanks them for that, and peculiarly mov- 
ing and most genuinely personal notes quiver through its 
lines, and allow us to recognise the personality of the 
writer, so rich in contrasts, in all the freshness of its 
nature. 


Thus every letter of Paul is a picture of Paul, and 
therein lies the unique value of the letters as sources 
for a historical account of their author. There can be 
but few Christians of later days, for whose inner lives 
we have such thoroughly undesigned sources of in- 
formation. Even the confessions of Augustine with 
their literary appeal to the public, cannot stand com- 
parison with Paul’s letters.? And there were probably 
exceedingly few people of the Imperial age of Rome 
whom we can study so exactly as we can Paul through 
his letters. 


It is quite obvious that a man who, as a con- 
temporary and occasional companion of Paul, describes 
the Apostle from outside, could not reach the truth 
‘that Paul reaches as unconsciously in his letters he 
draws a picture of himself. How colourless is the 
picture of- Bismarck by Moritz Busch over against 
) Bismarck’s own picture in the contemporary letters to 
his wife! But on that account the presentation of 


violence. Unconsciously the way of settling many a question about 
social and political matters has been derived from this: and now 
what is it good for ? 

1My investigations in Anatolian Studies (see above, p. 18) refer 
to this epistle. 

2 The older I grow the more the fact that this wonderful book was 
written for publication disturbs me. 


26 PAUL 


Paul by Luke in Acts is an indispensable supplement 
to the letters of Paul. In some details it is to be 
corrected by the letters of Paul, but in many others, 
surely it rests on good tradition.’ In opposition to the 
thesis that Luke put aside the testimony of Paul’s 
epistles in favour of a movement for union, which 
sought to mediate between the conflicting parties, of 
the Apostolic Age, I assert with confidence that Luke 
simply did not know our Pauline epistles. When Luke 
wrote they had not yet been collected and published. 
What Luke knew of Paul, he gained from other 
sources. Some things no doubt he had heard Paul 
tell of himself, as, for example, the striking story of his 
flight from Damascus in a basket,’ which the Apostle 
perhaps often laughingly related with variations in 
detail. Other material, and that certainly his best, 
came from his own observation, which he recounts, in 
his ‘we’ portions, just in the style of the antique 
description of a sea voyage.’ And it is a great service 
that he has pictured for us Paul as above all the man 
of action, Paul the wanderer, who passing through the 
ancient Mediterranean world, preached to that world 
the living Christ. 


We must now seek to gain a picture of this Mediter- 
ranean world, which is the world of Paul, for out of 
it he sprang and for it he spent his life. 


1 Adolf Harnack’s Studies of Luke are a sound reaction against the ; 
methods of the torturing Inquisition. The same applies to the works — 


of Eduard Meyer. 
2 Acts ix. 24 f. That Luke did not get this story from 2 Cor. xi. 


32 f. is pretty certain, for with his predeliction for potentates he 
would never have forgotten to mention the Hthnarch of King — 


Aretas. 


’Cf. e.g. the ‘we’ account of an Egyptian Admiral (c. 246 B.c.) 


of his sea voyage to Syria (in the Flinders Petrii Papyri) published by 
L. Mitteis and U. Wilcken in Grundztige und Chrestomathie der 
Papyruskunde, I. 2, Leipzig, 1912, p. 1 ff. 


~~ et Pa ow 


THE WORLD OF PAUL 


tote 
eae! me rs 
cel | 4, 





CHAPTER II 


THE WORLD OF PAUL 


SAILING on the Russian pilgrim steamer southwards 
along the west coast of Asia Minor, past the silent 
shore of Ephesus and the bare rocks of Samos, through 
the Archipelago of the Sporades, after twenty-four 
hours one reaches Rhodes. And if we then take an 
easterly course we can, after barely thirty-six hours’ 
journey along the south coast of Asia Minor, come to 
anchor in the roads of the Cicilian port Mersina.! 

A noble landscape, never to be forgotten, stretches 
out before us, while from the port the barges are rowed 
out to unload the ship. The light of the Anatolian 
morning sun quivers upon the waves and gleams on the 


1We made this journey, March 16th-19th, 1909, on the 
Russian pilgrim steamer ‘ Korniloff’ of Odessa bound for Palestine, 
stayed in Mersina and visited, as well as Soli-Pompeiopolis, Tarsus 
twice (on March 20th and 21st). The following observations were in 
the main made then; but a few date from our Anatolian journey in 
1906. On pilgrim ships where one may often be the only ‘ educated 
man’ amongst hundreds of Serb and Russian peasants, Oriental 
Jewish working people, Armenians, Turks, and Arabs, one learns ten 
times as much about the condition of the people of the Hast at the 
present day (and in ancient times) as on the great Levantine steamers, 
which even on the waves of the Mediterranean do not let us out of 
our cage of Huropean civilisation. Only, the obscurities of the learned 
university man must be put aside in order to come in contact with 
those people. Caspar René Gregory has some good remarks about 
small ships, Zu Fuss in Bibellanden (Das Land der Bibel, I., 6), 
Leipzig, 1919, p. 8 f. I have left the opening sentences above and 
the note essentially unaltered, although the route Odessa—Palestine is 
probably not yet in order again. 


(29) 


30 PAUL 


oars of the gaily clad Turkish boatmen as they rise out 
of the water. The brilliant white of the distant houses 
of Mersina greets us, and we see the domes and 
minarets of the places of worship, while the flags of the 
European consulates and of the Turkish authorities flap 
in the breeze. At the eastern end of the city white 
steam-clouds arise, and the puff of the locomotive comes 
over the waves to us. Mersina is the starting-point of 
the railway track which crosses the broad and fruitful 
Cilician plain to Adana. 

And this Cilician plain’ stretches out, then, behind 
the city, green and luxuriant into the distance, here and 
there interspersed with soft rolling hills crowned with 
ruins, till at last it is called to a halt by the great foot- 
hills of the Cilician Taurus, which rise up defiantly to 
heaven, and cut up the horizon into fantastic shapes. 
The contours of this immense mountain range are so 
wildly thrown about, that it is not easy to follow them, 
and, while the eye rests on the sunny snow of the 
glaciers, we dream albeit vaguely of primeval catas- 
trophies and the age-long work of the elements, which 
produced this landscape, long before the hand of man 
ploughed the land or plied the loom, and before the 
knee of man bowed before the powers of the world 
above. 

Far away in the East the ridge of the Syrian Amanus 
mountains, coming from the South, meets the Taurus, 
and it is a singularly moving experience to see from the 
ship in the evening after sundown the Amanus range 
and the snow-crowned peaks of the Taurus in wondrous 
Alpine glow looking out across the plain and the sea, 
while an Arab singer sings a passionate farewell to a 
company of young people embarking. 


1Cf. especially Franz X. Schaffer, Cilicia ; (Ergdnzungsheft, No. 
141, zw Petermanns Mitteilungen), Gotha, 1903, p. 20 ff. 


THE WORLD OF PAUL 31 


Entering the Cilician plain in March and coming 
from the interior of Asia Minor or from the west coast 
one seems to have skipped several weeks ; spring is so 
far advanced. The fig-trees, which in Ephesus and the 
Meander valley are thrusting forth their first bright 
green shoots, have here already large leaves that shine 
delightfully in the sun; the asphodel, which still 
blooms luxuriantly in April on the Plains of Troy and 
over the ruined heaps of Ephesus, is already withering 
in the fields of Soli-Pompeiopolis, a ruined city lying by 
the sea close to Mersina, and the anemones, which 
delighted us in their first glory of colour in the Meander 
valley and at Ephesus, have already bloomed in January 
on the Cilician plain. Even the poplar of Asia Minor, 
which with its slender silvery stem enters into sisterly 
rivalry with the minarets that form the characteristic 
emblem of Anatolia in city and village, is here further 
advanced, far further than in Konia or Angora; and by 
the grey old pillars of Pompeiopolis the luxuriant 
blossom of the Judas-tree blazes a deep red. Snow 
scarcely ever falls on that plain. All through the 
winter the garden supplies the household with its green 
produce. 

Later on the cornfields and cotton plantations yield 
heavy harvests in rich luxuriance, but then inexpressible 
sultriness weighs down upon the fields and fever rages 
up and down the country. As in March, 1909, aiter 
some time spent in wandering along the routes of Paul’s 
missions in the interior of Asia Minor and on the west 
coast, we travelled on the Adana railway through the 
glorious wheat-growing district of the plain, towards 
Paul’s city, Tarsus, we never dreamt that millions of 
grains from these ears of corn would not reach the 
threshing floor: but a few weeks later a fever, more 
terrible than the worst malaria, broke out on the sultry 
Cilician plain, and decimated the population as far as 


32 PAUL 


Antioch in Syria—the religious and national fanaticism 
of companies of Mohammedans goaded on to murder, 
to whose fury thousands of Armenian Christians fell 
victims.1 And while the surging waves of the streams, 
Cydnus and Sarus, swollen by the spring carried away 
the bodies of the murdered by hundreds to the sea and 
the Cilician earth daily drank anew the blood of martyrs, 
there out in the fields the corn perished on its stalks or 
was trodden down and burnt in the blind fury of the 
persecutors, 

To us that journey presented more peaceful pictures, 
and it did not enter into our minds that the sultry 
brooding heat of that plain has for century upon 
century gathered up passions into the soul of the 
‘people, which when the spark came would blaze forth 
in fire and burning, in threatening and slaughter.’ 

Our thoughts on that occasion on that broad Cilician 
plain were singularly moved by an indescribably won- 
derful spectacle, a piece of Paul’s world, more genuine 
certainly than was the first building we entered shortly 
afterwards in his own city—the railway-station with 
its bilingual (Turkish-European) sign ‘Tarsus.’ High 
in the air were immense squadrons of storks, coming 
from over the sea. They were the storks of Asia 
Minor and Europe on their way northward from Africa 
in the south. They had come down the valley of the 
Nile and up the valley of the Jordan over Syrian 
Antioch ;* then they had probably flown across the 


1 Cf. the letters of Mrs. Helen Davenport Gibbons, The Red Rugs 
of Tarsus, A Woman's Record of the Armenian Massacres of 1909, New 
York, 1917. Mrs. Gibbons, with her husband, Dr. Herbert Adams 
Gibbons, stayed in St. Paul’s Institute in Tarsus while I was visiting 
the city. 

2 Acts. ix. 1,6 d& SadAos, ére €umvewy aredys Kat hdvov. 

® March 20th, 1909. On one of the next days (March 25th) we 
observed near Antioch a great synod of storks engaged in eating, and 
on the Pass of Bailan a part of the course of flight of this squadron. 


THE WORLD OF PAUL 33 


bay of Alexandretta and were now equipping them- 
selves for the flight over the Taurus, some detachments 
getting provisions in the broad wet fields, others beauti- 
fully manoeuvring in the air, while other legions were 
already making a steady and quiet course for the passes 
of the Taurus. 

Who pointed out the road for these birds? It is 
the road of the great kings of the East, the road of 
Alexander and Cesar, the road of the Crusaders and 
of the Mohammedan army. Did the man-made road 
follow the immemorial track of the birds? Did we not 
hear in the rustle of their wings over the lonely Cilician 
plain the eternal rhythm of travel? And did we not 
find there, where the pavement of an old Roman road 
goes through a wheat field by Antioch alongside the 
modern road, the way taken by a Cilician traveller, 
who of old time had travelled from Syria in the south 
northward over the Taurus and over land and sea from 
Asia Minor in the east to Europe and the west ? 

The impression, that the Cilician plain has from the 
most ancient times been a centre of international inter- 
course, comes to one even more clearly in Paul’s city, 
Tarsus. Indeed there is but little of the ancient Tarsus 
remaining above ground, but when the natives dig for 
ancient hewn stones anywhere about the old city walls, 
near Paul’s gate, they discover pieces of terra-cotta and 
coins of Paul’s time. And above all, the geographical 
situation for international intercourse remains genu- 
inely the same as in the age of the great change of re- 
ligion. Just as even to-day on the Cilician plain the two 
civilisations of Islam, the Turkish and the Arabian, 
meet, so also in ancient times that country was the 
threshold of two civilisations and the bridge between 
two worlds. 

From the highest point of the modern city, perhaps 


from the castle-hill of ancient Tarsus, you look out over 


34 PAUL 


the great plain on all sides and, turning towards the 
south, where at times you catch a gleam of the sea, you 
have to your left, behind the blue heights of Amanas 
and the last outlying portions of the other Syrian ridges 
hidden in the glimmering haze, the world of Semitism. 
Behind and to your right stretches the endless chain of 
the Taurus, more majestic than ever when seen from 
Tarsus, with the pass, famed in history, the Cilician 
Gates, and behind that lies the world of Hellenistic- 
Roman civilisation. Anything coming from Syria and 
from the Jordan and making for Ephesus and for 
Corinth must pass through those gates, unless it is 
borne along the western shore over the waves of the 
Mediterranean. Through these gates went the sword- 
blades of Damascus and the balsam of Jericho, through 
these gates the Logos travelled—He who became man 
in Galilee, and again became Spirit for the whole world. 

Two young Anatolians who had been educated in 
the excellent St. Paul’s Institute, the American College 
in Tarsus, were our guides through their native city. 
As we sat there with them dining in a small inn, one 
of them wishing to say something pleasant, praised our 
German philosophy and said to me, full of pride in his 
own learning, ‘You have Kant.’ I replied to him, in 
no conventional phrase, but completely filled with the 
thought of that figure, which had become a living 
presence to me on the lonely Cilician plain beneath the 
squadrons of migrating birds and on the castle-hill of 
Tarsus facing the Cilician Gates: ‘You have Paul.’ 

And truly it is so: that Tarsus has its Paul, and 
that Paul came from Tarsus is no chance happening. 
The world Apostle came out of a classical centre of 
international intercourse, and his home itself was for 
him as achild a microcosmos, in which the forces of 
the great ancient cosmos of the Mediterranean world 
were all represented. 


THE WORLD OF PAUL B5 


The Mediterranean world the world of Paul! The 
Apostle himself once gave its boundaries through 
Jerusalem in the east, through Lllyricum, Rome and 
Spain in the west,’ while in the north lived the Sythian? 
and Barbarian*® and to the south the marvellous 
mountain of Sinai in Arabia raised its head.*| He who 
wishes to understand this world of Paul,®> must not 
begin with the preconceived idea that it falls apart into 
two halves, on this side Semitic, on that Greco-Roman. 
The fact of a relatively high degree of unity, at least in 
the civilisation of the coast lands of this world, ought 
rather to be taken as our starting-point. 

Paul indeed was acquainted also with a good part 
of the interior of Asia Minor, and in 2 Corinthians ® the 
list of tribulations on journeys through ‘perils in the 
wilderness’ and ‘in cold’ reflects probably mainly what 
he had experienced in the interior of Asia Minor.’ In 


1 Rom. xv. 19-24. 2 Col. iii. 11. 
Spoor); . Cor. xiv. 11> Rom. 1. 14. 
4 Gal. iv. 25. 


‘For geography in the widest sense we are indebted for the best 
to the great works on the Mediterranean Sea by Theobald Fischer and 
Alfred Philippson. Tor the ancient topography of Paul’s world to the 
works of Sir William M. Ramsay. JHxcellently adapted for an 
introduction to the subject is the masterly sketch by Theobald Fischer 
in K. Baedeker’s Das Mittelmeer, Leipzig, 1909, pp. xxii.-xxxii. Valu- 
able for our special study is Alphons Steinmann’s Die Welt des Paulus 
wm Zeichen des Verkehrs, Braunsberg, 1915. 

Ppa vor.. x1. 26 f. 

’The change of weather is there in the different elevations often 
sudden. On a March day in 1909 we had towards evening, at the 
summit of a Phrygian mountain pass, a violent snowstorm, and next 
day at noon we were passing a garden of peach trees full of pink 
blossom. Pawul’s journeys ought not to be studied without recognising 
the different elevations of the places he passed through. That Tarsus, 
Ephesus and Corinth have no elevation worth mentioning and that 
Syrian Antioch is only 262 feet above sea-level, Jerusalem, on the other 
hand, is 2587 feet, Damascus 2266 feet, Pisidian Antioch 3936 feet, 
Iconium 3368 feet, Lystra about 4034 feet : these facts are of importance 
for the understanding of Paul’s world. 


36 PAUL 


the same way ‘perils of robbers’’ probably refers to 
the interior of Anatolia.’ 

In coming to a correct judgment about the districts 
in which Primitive Christianity made its way the con- 
trast between the interior of Asia Minor and the coastal 
regions of the Pauline world® must be borne in mind. 
The plateau of the interior has a very low rainfall and 
the cold winter of the Steppes ; the west has a heavy 
winter rainfall and a genuine Mediterranean climate with 
Mediterranean vegetation. ‘The inner ‘isolated plateau 
has almost the character of the interior of Asia,’ the west 
of Asia Minor (with the neighbouring coast lands), on the 
other hand, is ‘an AXgean country with contours as varied 
as Greece and closely connected with the sea both by 
nature and history.’ But for all that an ‘easy and 
extensive intercourse’ between the two regions was 
possible. To see Angora after Ephesus, or Konia after 
Tarsus is to have the contrast between the two regions, 
and also their close contact, indelibly clear to the eye. 

Now though the lines of Paul’s journey routes lead 
through hundreds of miles of ‘the upper country ’* over 
the mountains of the interior of Asia Minor, yet more 


12 Cor. xi. 26. 

*Hven down to our own times it must be admitted that the 
formerly flourishing coast lands of Western Asia Minor offered many 
a lurking-place for robber-bands, and were in some places dangerous, 
especially for native travellers. Cf. the descriptions by Alfred 
Philippson in Feisen und Forschungen in Kleimasien, I. Heft (Peter- 
mann’s Mitteilungen Erginzungsheft, No. 167), Gotha, 1910, p. 6 ff. © 
The district about Miletus gave us a drastic commentary on ‘ perils of 
rivers, perils of robbers’ as on an April evening of 1906, having lost 
our way, we rode through the swamps of the Meander after sun-down 
and the day following at Didyma were in the house of a Greek who 
- had just been shot by robbers (see 2 Cor. xi. 26). 

°T base my remarks here upon the concise characterisation of this 
contrast which Alfred Philippson has given in Reisen wnd Forsoheme 
im Westlichen Kleinasien, I. P. 20. 

* Acts xix. 1. 7a dvwrepuxd. ep. 


THE WORLD OF PAUL 37 


frequently they cling to the roads of the coastal region 
or to the mariners’ routes, even twice or thrice covering 
for long distances the same track. In the main the 
Apostle’s world is to be sought where the sea breeze 
blows. The coast world of Cilicia, Syria, Palestine, 
Cyprus, Western Asia Minor, Macedonia, Achaia, and 
beyond these that of the further west, that is Paul’s 
world. 


The heart of this Pauline world is, however, un- 
doubtedly the wonderful region which may be called 
‘Aigean’: The circle, Ephesus—Troas—Philippi— 
Thessalonica—Corinth—Ephesus, saw the _ greatest 
work of Paul. The New Testament reflects this fact 
quite clearly in that all the Pauline letters which have 
been rescued for the canon, were either destined for 
this Aigean circle, or were written within its confines. 


The world of Paul is a cosmos—in the truest sense 
a world. Offering from its high towering lordly peaks 
endless perspectives over the green luxuriant plains 
and the sunlit sea, and here, as also in wild gorges and 
rustling groves, arousing in the spectator a sense of the 
divine awe, it enabled men to grow up in light and air 
—men of wide open soul who were able to interpret 
the voices of heaven and the riddles of hades. Thanks 
to the deep indentation of the seaboard with its num- 
berless safe inlets, and to its islands which serve as 
piers of the bridge carrying the road from east to west, 
it became the mother of navigation and international 
intercourse, turned into travellers the best and boldest 
of the men of its immemorial cities, the heroes, artists, 
merchant princes, students, singers, and prophets, and 
thereby enabled that civilisation to be created which we 
all inherit to-day. 

If anyone, who is no professional geographer, would 


38 PAUL 


characterise this world of Paul with a single concrete 
formula, he might call it the world of the olive-tree, 
and with that phrase he would also be within what is 
known to us of Paul’s own observations. For in 
Romans! he compares the Gentile world to a wild olive- 
tree, though indeed with quite another application. 

__ The world of Paul the world of the olive-tree ! 
The traveller of to-day, who fares southwards from the 
Teutonic North, remains at first for some time in his 
own world ; the print on the ticket alters indeed a little, 
the papers on sale at the stations are different; but 
there is no passing into another civilisation. But then 
there comes a moment when on a sudden North is 
changed into South. That is the instant, when travel- 
ling towards Marseilles, the first olive-tree is seen in 
the Rhone valley a little south of Valence and north of 
Avignon. Many a northerner has failed to recognise 
this olive tree, mistaking it for an old willow, deceived 
by the similarity of the trunk and its silver grey foliage. 
Others like to see in the orange-tree, laden with golden 
fruit, the typical tree of the south and east. But that 
does not apply in ancient times; the orange-tree is a 
relatively later importation. The fig-tree also cannot 
be taken as the characteristic tree of the south, for it 
flourishes in the open in Heidelberg and Oxford, and 
even in Norderney and Heligoland. Rather that first — 
olive-tree at Avignon with its gnarled trunk and its 
solemn gloom is the South and is the Levant. 

From the ancestors of this tree blessing distilled 
upon the peoples. In the eye of history an enormous 
amount of humanising civilisation stands crowned with 
the olive branch. The tree of Homer, the tree of 
Sophocles, the olive is the living symbol of the unity 
of the Mediterranean world, it is the tree also of the 


1 Rom) x77) 


THE WORLD OF PAUL 39 


Bible, both of Old and New Testament. In the names 
Mount of Olives and G'ethsemane (that is oil-press) as also 
in the title and name Messiah, Christ (the Anointed) the 
olive-tree has influenced the deepest thoughts and the 
most holy words of our sacred tradition. Without the 
provision of olives, moreover, Paul’s journeys would be 
inconceivable ; the fruit of the olive-tree will have played 
the same réle on his sea-voyages that it does to-day on the 
Levantine steamers and sailing vessels, especially for the 
sailors and deck-passengers. A handful of olives, a piece 
of bread, and a drink of water—the Levantine traveller 
requires no more than that! 

The world of Paul the world of the olive-tree! 
There is a map showing the distribution of the olive in 
the Mediterranean world.1 When I first saw it, without 
noticing its title, it appeared to me to be a map of the 
Jewish or primitive Christian dispersion. As a matter 
of fact, the zone of the olive-tree and the region covered 
by the Jewish dispersion under Imperial Rome? are 
almost exactly coincident ; and we might perhaps call 
the Jewish Dispersion itself by the name by which one 
oi the many synagogues of the imperial capital was 
called: Synagogue of the Olive-Tree.2 Paul also com- 
pared the Jewish race to an olive-tree.* But the olive- 
tree zone almost exactly coincides also with the map of 
Paul’s missionary journeys, if we leave out Tunis, 


'In Theobald Fischer’s work Der Oelbaum. Seine geographische 
Verbreitung, seine wirtschaftliche und kultiwr-historische Bedeutung 
(Petermann’s Mitteilungen Erganzungsheft, No. 147), Gotha, 1904. In 
the map of Paul’s world included in the first edition of Paul (1911) 
the zone of the olive-tree is marked in green, following Fischer. On 
this subject see also Sven Hedin’s Jerusalem, Leipzig, 1918, p. 38. 

* Cf. the ring of about 143 cities (marked blue in my map of 1911) 
encircling the Mediterranean where the Jewish dispersion was to be 
found in the imperial period. 

3 Swvaywy? “EAalas, Corpus Inscriptionum Grecarum, No. 9904. 

BoOnG stat 7, 


40) PAUL 


Algeria, and Morocco; the almost entire lack of olive- 
trees in Egypt is remarkable, and there, too, we have 
no trace of Paul having travelled. Almost all the 
important place-names in the history of Paul are to be 
found in the zone of the olive-tree: Tarsus, Jerusalem, 
Damascus, Antioch, Cyprus, Ephesus, Philippi, Thes- 
salonica, Athens, Corinth, Illyricum, Rome (Spain). 
This world of Paul is relatively uniform, in the first 
place, in its climatic and other outward conditions of 
civilisation. The contrasts in vegetation seen by us 
between Cilicia and Ephesus! or between Antioch and 
Corinth do not weigh very heavily against this. In all 
this great civilised world the means of livelihood, 
especially for those in humble circumstances, were 
probably everywhere much the same as regards food, 
clothing, housing, and work. 
_, And politically the Imperium Romanum had stamped 
a uniform impression upon this and even upon the whole 
ancient world. Alexander and his successors had in- 
deed done much in preparation. The centuries of 
international politics before Paul, that stretch from 
Philip and his great son to the Cesars, are clearly 
reflected in many newly given Greek city-names, which 
re-echo through the Pauline tradition : Antzoch in Syria 
and Antioch in Pisidia, Seleucia in Syria and Atialia in 
Pamphylia, Laodicia in Phrygia and Alexandria (Troas) 
in Mysia, Philippi and Thessalonica in Macedonia, 
Necopolis in Epirus, Ptolemais, Cesarea (Stratonos) and 
Antipatris in the Syrian and Palestinian coastal region— 
each of these names is a monument of that political 
history which had worked towards the unification of 
Paul’s world. 

The importance of this political unity of the world 
for the coming world-religion has long been recognised. 


1 See above, p. 31. 


THE WORLD OF PAUL 4] 


When you stand before the walls of the temple of 
Augustus in Angora (Ancyra), the capital of ancient 
Galatia, which Paul indeed probably touched at, you 
have before your eyes in a somewhat remote part of the 
Pauline world a classical witness of that political unity 
of the world—a witness which Paul himself may have 
seen—in the Latin and Greek text there preserved of 
the summary of the events of his reign composed by the 
Emperor Augustus himself. 

Although this Monumentum Ancyranum is written 
in two languages, the conclusion does not follow that 
in Paul’s world Latin was as much an international 
language as Greek. Greek was the language of inter- 
course, especially amongst the people of the great cities, 
to whom in his world he made his appeal, as the fact 
that his letter to the Christians at Rome was written in 
Greek most clearly indicates. Greek had penetrated 
deeply into Syria and Palestine ; in particular the great 
cities, the special field of Paul’s work, were strongly 
under Greek influence, both as to language and general 
culture. In Palestine, indeed, Aramaic was the living 
language of the people, and Paul spoke it.” For all 
that we must recognise that in New Testament times 
Greek was widely used by the common people in 
Galilee, Transjordania and Jerusalem. But at Antioch 
in Syria Hellenism became predominant, and the greatest 
difficulty which in other cases is presented to the 
‘missionary, that of mastering the language, and thereby 
the psyche of the heathen, scarcely existed for Paul 
in his world. As from childhood onwards he had been 
a Jew to the Jews, so also he was a Hellenist to the 
Hellenists,* because the tongue and soul of Hellenism 
had come to him with the air of Tarsus. 


: 
| 1 The inscriptions of Roman Jews in the Catacombs, which in the 
great majority of cases are in Greek, point to the same fact. 

2 Acts xxi. 40. Hl Corsixe 20) f 


42 PAUL 


Finally the world of Paul is uniform also as regards 
a broad undercurrent of common popular religious 
beliefs and forms of expression. The naive geocentric 
view of earth and heaven is common to all both in east 
and west. Everyone recognises a here below and 
there above, the divine must come down from heaven 
to earth and humanity must rise from earth to heaven. 
Throughout this whole world of Paul from east to west 
and from west to east there were current tales many 
centuries old of visible manifestations of divinity, of 
the deception and wickedness of demons, of a divine 
power become human, which overcomes the powers of 
darkness. And in this whole world of Paul we see a 
great journeying of Pilgrims, who desired to wash away 
their sins and to satisfy their need at the great holy 
places. The Jew of the Dispersion travelling from the 
west to Jerusalem meets the pilgrim of Ephesus and 
the sick man on his way to the shrine of Asclepius of 
Epidaurus possibly on the same ship, and each extols 
the miracles of his God with believing fervour. 

Such is the world of Paul, washed by the same 
waves, blessed by the same sun, and viewed from 
within also no chaos of alien bodies brought together 
artificially by force, but an organism of great compact- 
ness.’ 


The reason why this compactness of the Mediter- 
ranean civilisation has so often been disregarded, is a 
doctrinaire attitude similar to that which we have 
frequently noted in connection with the study of Paul. 
The culture of the world of Paul has been far too much 
identified with its literary culture. And certainly, the 
comparison of the Greeco-Roman literature of the first 
century of Imperial Rome with the earliest written 


‘On the unity of civilisation in the Hast cf. the important 
observations of H, Littmann, D.L.Z., 1910, col. 164. 


THE WORLD OF PAUL 43 


records of Jewish-Rabbinic wisdom of Paul’s day 
shows a striking contrast, a contrast which extends 
not only to literary method but to mental and spiritual 
attitude. This may be made clear by means of a 
parallel. Compare to-day—perhaps the analogy is not 
too daring—the lecture of an Islamic teacher in a Mosque 
at Damascus, with the teaching note-book of a modern 
Italian historian. These are two worlds which are 
utterly separated from one another. But if instead we 
compare an artisan or street hawker of Damascus with 
a man of the same calling in Naples, then it is men of 
very similar mental structure that stand before us. 

Students of antiquity have for long taken their idea 
of the ancient world from ancient literature. But 
literature is only a part of the ancient world, and itself 
only preserved in fragments, reflects only fragments of 
the culture, for the most part, of the upper classes. 

Thus then the picture of Paul’s world was drawn 
almost exclusively with the aid of literary sources, 
and became a gloomy background, the better fitted for 
displaying the brilliant lght of Christianity. The 
Gospel had entered a world decadent, morally corrupt 
and religiously bankrupt. So many have learnt and 
taught, unconsciously also influenced by the polemical 
superlatives of the Fathers of the Church, because in 
the literature of the period they have only heard the 
loud voices which speak of denial, dispair, mockery and 
unbridled lust. Because other voices are silent it has 
no doubt been supposed that they never have spoken. 
And Paul himself seemed particularly lberal with 
the gloomy colours in painting a picture of his world, 
when in Romans and elsewhere* he portrayed the 
depravity of his surroundings with the intensity of a 
preacher of repentance. 


1 Rom. i. 24 ff. Cp. elsewhere, especially the frequent lists of vices 
in his letters. 


Ls 


44 PAUL 


But the simple truth was forgotten that neither a 
single phenomenon nor a complex civilisation can be 
described by a single formula. The world of Paul has 
its deep shadows, that is quite obvious; but it also 
has its bright light, that ought to be just as obvious. 
In the same letter to the Romans which draws that 
picture of the sensual life of the great city, there stands 
that tremendous word about the law, which is written 
in the heart and is active in the conscience of the 
Gentiles who are without the law.’ 

And now, especially through the great archeological 
discoveries of the nineteenth century, we have found 
again parts of the world of Paul which make it possible 
for us to set the light alongside the shadow. Not only 
have huge ruins of the great cities of Paul’s world been 
brought to light again through the excavations in Asia 
Minor and Greece—especially impressive are the un- 
covering of Ephesus by British and Austrian investi- 
gators and the recovery of the cities Pergamon and 
Miletus, as well as of the great religious centre 
Didyma, by German research—but in those unliterary 
texts written on stone, papyrus and potsherd,’ which 
now lie in thousands in our museums, the voices of the 
unliterary people of Paul’s world, though apparently 
silent for ever, have again become audible. In letters, 
wills, certificates of marriage or divorce, accounts, and 
receipts, records of judicial proceedings, dedications, 
epitaphs and confessions of sins, these people stand 
before us laughing and scolding, loving and mean, 
malicious and kindly. 

The chief value of these new discoveries, it seems to 
me, lies in this, that besides giving highly important 
material for the study of language, law and the social 

1Rom. i. 14 f., . . . 7d &pyov tod vouov ypamrov év Tats Ka,polaus 
QAUTWV. 


2 Of. above, p. 7, note 2. 


THE WORLD OF PAUL 45 


history, they show us living people much as they 
naturally were, because entirely free from literary pose 
and altogether in the workaday clothes of their calling. 
That the fragments most interesting as human docu- 
ments come from Egypt depends upon the climate of 
that marvellous country. Papyrus leaves could not he 
buried for two thousand years in Asia ; but in Egypt 
that is possible. We are, however, certainly within 
our rights in regarding the spiritual and other facts 
derived from these human relics of Hellenistic-Roman 
Egypt for the most part as typical for the world of 
Paul. 


The study of these unliterary documents for what 
they can show us of the souls of their writers is not 
yet finished and for long will continue to offer a great 
field of work; but already it can be asserted that the 
old picture of that ancient world morally and religiously 
degenerate is precisely through these documents proved 
to be a caricature. 

Of course, they also give evidence for the more 
gloomy sides of Paul’s world; we have amongst the 
papyri, for example, documents referring to unchastity,’ 
bribery,’ robbery, violence, theft,* exposure of children,’ 


1A large number of papyri throw light on the subject of prosti- 
tution, which is referred to also in a number of allusions in Paul’s 
letters. 

“Compare the letter of complaint against an Hgyptian official of 
the Imperial period who had accepted bribes. Pap. class. Philol. I. 
No. 5 (Archiv fiir Papyrusforschung, 4, p. 174). Also the edict of the 
Egyytian Preefect Tiberius Julius Alexander, a.p. 68, censuring the 
bribery of officials (Archiv, loc. cit.). There are even preserved 
several letters of the second century B.c., in which a certain Peteyris 
(in all probability a prisoner) seeks to obtain his liberty ‘ by promis- 
ing baksheesh, as Wilcken appropriately puts it; he promises 5 
talents of copper, then 15 talents (Archiv fiir Papyrusforschung, 2, 
p- 578 f.). Also the much discussed passage Acts xxii. 28 is probably 


[Yor continuation of footnotes see next page. 


46 PAUL 


and unbridled impudence.t And unfortunately it can- 
not be said that such documents ceased to be written 
in the Christian period in Egypt.” But nevertheless on 
the whole the brighter colours are clearly seen. The 
family life of the middle and lower classes is seen here 
by no means in an only unfavourable light. But above 
all a strong religious emotion and marked aptitude for 
religion are to be seen in these people.? Paul’s world 
was in no sense religiously bankrupt. Also the religi- 
ous syncretism and the migrating of Gods from east to 
west and west to east have now for long been recognised 
as proofs of strong religious feeling. In Paul’s speech 
on Mars Hill witness is borne to the Athenians that 
they are very religious ;* and this verdict may be safely 
generalised for the whole of the world of Paul; and 
from the standpoint of the history of religion we may 
adopt Paul’s statement—the fruit of generous intuition 
—that the age of the sending of Jesus Christ was the 
age of Pleroma (fulfilment), the fitting time divinely 
ordained for the coming of salvation. How important 


1Cf. the letter of the naughty boy, Theon, to his father, Theon, 
Oxyrhynchus Papyrus, No. 119 (2nd-3rd cent. 4.p.), Licht vom Osten, 
4th Ed., p. 168 ff. 

2Cf. e.g. Oxyrhynchus Papyrus, No. 903 (4th cent. 4.p.), which 
reflects an anything but happy Christian marriage. 

$QOn this point the numerous religious inscriptions are most 
instructive. 

4 Acts xvii. 22, cata mavta ws devo Wapovertépors tuas Oewpd. 

5 Gal. iv. 4, ore d¢ 7ADev 76 TAHPwWMA TOV xpovov, éLamréareilev 6 Oeds 


\ ex 3 aA 
TOV VLOV QUTOUV. 


to be understood from this point of view: Claudius Lysias refers with 
satisfaction to the great expense in bribery that had gone to obtaining 
his citizenship. It is no use objecting solemnly that the citizenship 
was not purchasable. Compare also Acts xxiv. 26. 

3 Cf. the innumerable letters of complaint in the Papyri. 

*Cf. Oxyrhynchus Papyrus, No. 744 (June 17th, 1 B.c.), Licht 
vom Osten, 4th Kd., p. 134 ff, and the Berliner Griechische Urkwnde, 
No. 1104 (Alexandria, 8 B.c.). 


THE WORLD OF PAUL 47 


within the whole picture of Paul’s world was the special 
phenomenon of Hellenistic Judaism dispersed every- 
where needs only to be noticed: one glance at the 
map‘ is enough to show what the Jewish Diaspora 
meant. 

From what has been said it follows that the world 
of Paul can be reconstructed with more ample materials 
than were available for previous generations of scholars, 
who worked with literary materials almost alone. And 
now it is possible to ask about that portion of the world 
out of which Paul himself sprang, I mean about the 
social class of Paul. 

The older study of Paul with its one-sided interest 
in its bloodless, timeless paragraphs of the ‘ Doctrine ' 
or the ‘ Theology ’ of Paul did not trouble itself about 
the problem of the social class of Paul. It was meeting 
with the spectre of the modern social question that first 
awoke an interest in social affairs of the past—an 
interest which deepened with time. And with many 
I believe that the question to what social class Paul 
belonged is an important special problem of the general 
theme ‘the world of Paul.’ 

To understand a man we need to know the class out 
of which he sprang and with which he associated him- 
self. Not that a man is simply a product of his environ- 
ment to be mechanically calculated. Both the genius 
and the babbler can have their home in a palace as well 
as ina hovel. The individuality of the man, most of all 
the special something in the great man, is a mystery 
which does not reveal itselfi—not even when we have a 
complete knowledge of outer circumstances. 

But just because we do not believe ourselves able 
to analyse the inner contents of a personality by studying 
its outer circumstances, we are in a position to appreci- 
ate without prejudice everything that can be actually 


‘Cf, above, p. 39, note 1. 


48 PAUL 


ascertained by the study of the environment. If such 
study cannot enable us to see into the heart of a man, 
it can at least teach us to interpret the lines and cal- 
losities of his hand, or to understand this or that in- 
teresting trait in his countenance. Truly we would not 
like to be without the information that Jesus sprang 
from an artisan household in a country district, and 
that Luther was the son of a miner and the grandson 
of a peasant. So let us follow up the traces which hint 
at the social class to which Paul belonged. 

It appears to me to be certain, that Paul of Tarsus, 
although his native city was a seat of Greek higher 
education, was not one of the literary upper classes, 
but came from the unliterary lower classes and remained 
one of them. The inconspicuous remark of Acts,’ that 
Paul was a tentmaker and in Corinth worked as such 
in the tent-making household of Aquila and Priscilla, 
has a special importance in this connection. The tent- 
maker Paul ought certainly not to be thought of as a 
learned writer of books, who to refresh himself from 
his brain work would sit for an hour or two working as 
an amateur at the loom. Nor ought he to be disfigured 
with the bombastic-comical title ‘tent-manufacturer,’ as 
though the artisan missionary was a disgrace to a 
Christianity become respectable. Rather he was a 
simple man who as a journeyman worked at his trade 


for wages, which were the economic basis of his ex- | 


istence. 

There are several places in the epistles where Paul 
testifies with pride, that as a missionary he had earned 
his whole living by working with his hands.’ The pious 
idlers of Thessalonica* were bluntly snubbed by the man 


1 Acts. xviii. 3, Hoav yap oxnvorool TH TEXVY. 

21 Thess. ii. 9; 2 Thess. iii. 8; 1 Cor. iv. 12 and the whole of 
chap. ix. 

$2 Thess. iii. 10 f. 


THE WORLD OF PAUL 49 


who worked ‘day and night,’! that he ‘might not be 
chargeable to anyone.’? The great importance of the 
thought of wages with Paul becomes more understand- 
able when we recognise that this popular sphere of 
illustration was specially natural® to a man who worked 
for wages, for whom wages were not of grace but of right.* 
And the picture of the tent ‘not made with hands’ that 
we are some day to receive from God,’ is doubly im- 
pressive in the mouth of a tent-maker. The mention by 
the Apostle of ‘large letters’ ® also is best explained as 
a reference to the clumsy, awkward writing of a work- 
man’s hand deformed by toil; and this also throws light 
on the fact that Paul preferred to dictate his letters; 
writing probably was not particularly easy for him, and 
he may perhaps have dictated many of his letters while 
himself working at his tent-making. 

In the East of to-day the ancient handicrafts con- 
tinue to exist in many of their characteristic features. 
Observations which can, for example, be made in the 
interior of Anatolia, are instructive. When in one of 
the bypaths of the Bazar at Damascus we see a dyer 
stretching down into his vat with his long blue-stained 
arms, we are reminded that we have seen exactly the 
same thing somewhere else; yes, indeed, it was in 
Pompeii, where close on two thousand years ago the 
workmen of the same trade as this dyer stood at the 
same dye-vat and with the same blue-stained arms 
dragged the same woollen yarn out of the dye-bath. 
Thus, too, the old weaver whom we saw in the neigh- 
bourhood of ‘ Paul’s gate’ making a coarse cloth on his 
poverty-stricken primitive loom, might at least give us 


11 Thess. ii. 9; 2 Thess. iii. 8. 22 Thess. iii. 8. 
* Certainly no thoroughly worked out ethics of wages is to be de- 
duced from this. Cf. Licht vom Osten, 4th Ed., p. 266 f. 
4 Rom, iv. 4. °2 Cor. v. 1, oikiay ayetpomrotntov. 
°Gal. vi, 11, iSere ryAikous iuiv ypdppacw eypawa 77 uh xeupi, 
4 


50 PAUL 


the suggestion of how the workshop of an ancient 
weaver used to appear. Probably the melancholy beat 
of the ancient loom will not be heard much longer in 
Cilicia. In the great modern cotton-spinning mill at 
Tarsus, English machinery of a quite other technical 
age had long been whirring even before the war; and 
the students of primitive forms of human industry will 
have to hasten with their apparatus to record the 
manual dexterity and the rhythm of the ancient 
handicrafts still conserved in the East. 

It would, however, be a mistake to call the artisan 
Paul a ‘proletarian’ in the sense which that word has 
to-day. The very fact that he was born a Roman 
citizen shows that his family cannot have lived in 
absolutely humble circumstances.’ As a free-born man 
also his social standing was higher than that of the 
many slaves in his churches. And the language of 
the Apostle also enables us to arrive at a.better un- 
derstanding on this question. 

A careful investigation of the vocabulary of Paul’s 
Epistles? has proved that Paul did not write literary 
Greek ; if further the relation of his style to Atticism 
be studied, it is still clearer that he made no attempt 
to write according to accepted Greek standards. These 
observations confirm our thesis that both as regards 
his home circumstances and the place he occupies in 
history he stands below the educated upper classes. 
But even though his vocabulary is that of the people 
and the tone of every-day speech is predominant in his 
letters, yet his unliterary language is not vulgar to the de- 
eree that finds expression in many contemporary papyri. 


. On the ground of his language rather Paul should 


be assigned to a higher class. It is certainly, when all | 


1 Acts xxii. 28. 


“Theodor Nageli, Der Wortschatz des Apostels Paulus, Gottingen, | 
1905. 


THE WORLD OF 'PAUL 51 


is said and done, extraordinarily difficult to solve the 
problem of social classes of antiquity;1 even in an 
attempt to discover Paul’s social standing we are con- 
scious that we can only feel our way forward. But 
anyone who recognises the general scope of the problem, 
will at least admit that we have drawn a relatively clear 
line, in placing Paul below the literary upper classes 
and above the purely proletarian lowest classes. 

Ii finally it is asked, to which side of this middle 
position the Apostle tends, the answer is: by birth and 
education, by sympathies and circumstances of life, he 
belongs far more to the middle and lower classes than 
to the upper class. He is no social climber forsaking 
his own class. As a missionary chiefly working 
amongst the unliterary masses of the great cities Paul 
did not patronisingly descend into a world strange to 
him : he remained in his own social world. 

Now we turn to the study of his human personality 
so far as its features are to be discovered: this will 
show us how Paul, in his origin and nature akin to the 
unliterary classes of his world, did not sink from sight 
in the confused mass of the submerged, but, rooted in 
that mass, as greater than it, arose a leader. 


1 Cf. Licht vom Osten, 4th Ed., p. 6 f. 





PAUL THE MAN 





CHAPTER ITI 


PAUL THE MAN 


CoNCERNING the outward appearance of Paul the man, 
there is no reliable tradition. We are like the Christians 
of Colosse and Laodicea who had ‘not seen’ his ‘ face 
in the flesh.’? His Jewish origin, of which he was proud,” 
was no doubt visible to the people of Ephesus and Co- 
rinth. And the Paul of the letters which have come 
down to us was a man who had already passed the fifth 
decade of his life; he speaks of himself in one place as 
‘Paul, the aged.’*> Anancient description of him in an 
apocryphal book‘ depicts him as by no means an 1m- 
posing figure, and recollecting the numerous confessions 
of bodily weakness that run through his letters,” we may 
perhaps conclude that on the whole that description was 
correct, that in fact Paul was not distinguished by out- 
’ ward advantages of stature and countenance. 

There are neither pictures nor busts of Paul; that 
goes without saying: who in that day would have 
thought of recording his face for the future, when the 
countenance of the Master Himself even had not been 


1 Col. ii. 1, dco: ody Evdpaxay 75 tpdcwrdv pov év GapKi. 

29 Cor: xi; 22; Phil. iii. 5; Rom, xi. 1. 

$Philemon 9, ds IatAos rpecBirns—if here rpeoBevtys (cf. Eph. 
vi. 20) ought not to be read, cf. R. Steck, Prot. Monatshefte, 1914, p. 
96 ff., even in that case the letters would probably have been written 
by a man of between forty-five and fifty-five years. 

4The Acts of Paul, 3. On this point compare the suggestions of 
Erwin Preuschen, ZNTW, 2 (1901), p. 187 ff., which if they do not 
fully explain the matter are at any rate well worth considering. 

52 Cor. xii. 9 and xiii. 4, ete. 


(55) 


56 PAUL 


immortalised? Even if the old Jewish horror of pic- 
tures had not prevented it, the whole attitude of mind 
of primitive Christianity was far too much dominated by 
the coming age to be able to think of the interest which 
future generations on this earth might feel in the out- 
ward features of the Saviour and his Apostles.! Just 
as little did the artists in marble and colour, who por- 
trayed so many of the Cesars, the imperial ladies, the 
generals, and leading literary men press their services 
upon Paul. Who at that time in the official world had 
taken any note of the obscure travelling preacher ? 

The Christ-cult was in the time of Paul a secret 
affair of humble unknown people in the back streets of 
the great Mediterranean cities. When Paul chanced to 
write that the faith of a Christian church was known 
‘throughout the whole world’? he of course means in 
the amiable*® hyperbole, dear to the ancient Oriental, 
the microcosmos of the Christian ‘ world,’ * not the great 
official world.” And when, as reported by Luke,’ he 
emphatically states that the facts of his Christian life 
did not take place ‘in a corner,’ this apologetically 


1 Tt is this that makes impossible the early dating by some Ameri- 
can scholars of the much-discussed chalice of Antioch. 

2 Rom. i. 8, év dAw 76 Kdope, cf. Col. i.6; 1 Thess. i. 8 ; cf. Clemens 
Romanus, 1 Cor. v. 7, and with it Friedrich Pfister, Der Reliquienkult 
um Altertum, Giessen, 1909, p. 267. Moreover, the popular hyperbole 
of the ‘ whole world,’ Lk. 11. 1 and Acts xi. 28, ought not to be pressed. 

’It is a hyperbole of hatred, on the other hand, when it is charged 
against the Pauline mission that it had ‘ turned the world upside down,’ 
Acts xvil. 6, xxiv. 5. 

4Cf. 1 Thess. i. 8 with 2 Thess. i. 4. 

° Similarly a heathen epitaph (now in Braunsberg) of an otherwise 
unknown Hgyptian lady, Seratus, and her relations, speaks of their 
modesty as ‘known in all the world’ (Archiv fir Papyrusforschung, 5, 
p. 169, dv kat 7 cwdpootvy Kata tov Kécpov AeAdAnTaL), Or When a 
Christian letter of later date says of a (Bishop) John that his fame 
goes through ‘the whole world’ (Archiv fiir Papyrusforschung, 4, 
p. 558). 


° Acts xxvi. 26, 03 yap éorw ev ywvria mempaypevoy TodTo. 


PAUL THE MAN 57 


satisfying expression does not contradict the statement 
that the new cult and its leading personalities still re- 
mained as good as unknown to the world at large, and 
that we may look in vain to find any reflection of the 
man Paul either in contemporary literature or in the 
art of that day. 

What Paul himself says about his outer man must 
therefore suffice for us:' he bore the image of Adam 
who was formed from the earth; after laying aside this 
earthly likeness he would however bear the image of 
the second, the heavenly Adam, of the Lord Jesus 
Christ who had been transfigured to spiritual glory. 

The countenance then of a man looks upon us, as 
we stand before Paul, the countenance of Adam upon 
which is written all that is involved in that contradict- 
ory double fate of the sons of Adam: they are ‘the 
image of God,’* yet they have been subjected to sin 
and death.* 

Unfortunately it is not superfluous strongly to em- 
phasise the genuine humanity of Paul. The traditional 
conception has too often made him either a parchment 
saint, unacquainted with the world or else has suffered 
the man to disappear behind the system. It is one of 
the most satisfactory advances in the study of Paul that 
in the last decades so much more interest has been taken 
in the man Paul, whereas even Ferdinand Christian Baur 
in his book Paw/,* which was a classic in its own day, © 
touched upon the ‘characteristic features of the indi- 
viduality ’ of the Apostle only in an appendix.® 

1 Cor. xv. 49, kal xabas epopécapev THy cixdva TOD xoiKod, poperwpev 
kal THY €ikova TOD éroupaviov. 

Se MOOr. X14 3 Rom. vy. 12 ff., 1 Cor. xv. 22. 

* Paulus, der Apostel Jesu Christi, sein Leben und Wirken, seine 
Briefe und seine Lehre, 2nd Hd. (edited by Eduard Zeller), Leip- 
zig, 1866 f. 


* Well worthy of note amid the enormous modern literature about 
Paul are the psycho-analytical study of O. Pfister, Die Entwicklung des 


58 PAUL 


The letters viewed as_ confidential non-literary 
sources have much to tell us of Paul the man. Each 
letter of Paul is, as we saw, a picture of Paul; yes, in 
several of his letters there is a quick change of one 
picture after another; and in all these pictures uncon- 
sciously left by himself, he gives us a glimpse not only 
of the frowns and smiles on his face but also of his very 
soul. 

In spite of such excellent witness to himself we 
cannot entirely reconstruct him. Apart from the frag- 
mentary character of the letters, this lies in the nature 
of historical investigation, which in so far as it is con- 
cerned with exceptional men, always must stop at a 
certain point, because there begins a mystery, which 
even the most refined and sensitive psychological art 
cannot altogether unveil. 


For all that a large and essential part of the man | 


Paul is accessible tous. And the result of even a rapid 
study of the personal confessions in his letters is one 
deep impression: the man who wrote these tragments 
is a great man, an unusual man of unusual gifts. 

A remark that applies purely to a point of style 
would make that clear, even to those who in studying 
human greatness prefer to let considerations of form 
predominate. The brilliant power of giving plastic 
form to his thought which Paul possesses in a similar 
degree to Heraclitus,’ and which he uses without effort, 


Apostels Paulus, Imago 6 (1920), p. 243-290, and the investigation of 
Otto Schmitz, Das Lebensgefihl des Paulus, Miinchen, 1922, which 
endeavour to approach the inner structure of the soul of Paul the 


religious man, each by means of its own special method. Both these © 


very original pieces of work are as such with their independent points 
of view yet another proof of the inexhaustible depths of Paul’s 
personality. 


1T once read Heraclitus under the guidance of Hermann Diels, — 
who has since passed away, in the memorable evening sittings of the — 


ee ee ee 


PAUL THE MAN 59 


is proof of the spontaneous freshness of his creative 
nature. 
The letter killeth, the spirit giveth life,1— 


the man who had only written this monumental line 
would have been for its sake immortal. 

The Jews ask for signs, the Greeks seek after wisdom.’ 

The kingdom of God is not in word, but in power.® 

Knowledge (Gnosis) puffeth up, but love edifieth.* 

We know in part.® 

The spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God.°® 


Such flashes and sparks come a hundred times in 
the letters, which were not intended for the applause of 
literary salons but came quietly and unassumingly to 
unknown people to help them in their need through power 
from above. We have everywhere not the meditated 
artificiality of the rhetorician counting the rhythm of 
his phrases, but the natural blazing out of hidden great- 
ness. Supposing for a moment that all these brilliant 
phrases had not come down to us in their context in 
the letters, but in fragments scattered over the ancient 
literature of a thousand years—like the sayings olf 
Heraclitus, the Obscure of Ephesus—the editor who for 
the first time brought them together would be showing 
us fragments of a hero. Das 


— 


The immense contrasts in Paul’s nature, however, 
reveal even more of his human greatness. Paul had 


Berliner Greeca, and have made the above comparison deliberately. 
Hans Leisegang, Der Apostel Paulus als Denker, Leipzig, 1923, p. 39, 
similarly draws a parallel between the expression of thought by 
Heraclitus and by the Apostle. 

12 Cor. iii. 6, 76 yap ypdppa arokrévver, TO O€ TvEdua Cworrorel. 

21 Cor. i. 22, Iovdato. onpeia airotow Kat "EAAnves codiav Ly- 
TOVTW. 

31 Cor. iv. 20, od yap év Adyw H BactAcia Tov Geod, GAN év dvvdmet. 

41 Cor. viii. 1, 4 yrdous drool, 7 Se dydry oiKxodopet. 

51 Cor. xiii. 9, éx pepovs yap ywookopev. 

61 Cor. ii. 10, 76 yap rvedpua radvTa épavva, Kat Ta BAO Tod Oecd. 


60 “PAUL 


room in his personality for contradictions which would 
have hopelessly shattered a small man, and which over- 
burden the small-minded students of Paul with such a 
mass of problems, that they have to get air for them- 
selves by propounding their theses, ‘not genuine’ and 
‘interpolated.’ But these contradictions did not shatter 
Paul; they gave his inner life that tremendous tension 
which expressed itself in the energy put forth in his 
life-work. 


The clearest case of these contrasts is that between 
his ailing body and his: physical powers of work. His 
poor body was weak and ill, a fragile ‘earthen vessel ’ 
he calls it himself,’ and the tentmaker compares it to 
the light tent-dwelling which has no permanency.” He 


speaks in Galatians of a severe attack of illness and it — 


appears to have been an illness whose symptoms aroused 
disgust.2 Most moving of all is his reference to a 
severe chronic ailment with occasional attacks that 
were very painful: he calls this illness 


a thorn in the flesh, 
a messenger of Satan to buffet me.‘ 


and we cannot determine to what special disease these 
symptoms point. Various conjectures have often been 
attempted, but none are adequately convincing; the 
sparing intimations of Paul himself warn us to be 
cautious.” All we know is the thrice-repeated prayer 
of the Apostle in his despair to the Saviour for healing,° 


12 Cor. iv. 7, év datpaxivous oKxeverw. 

29 Cor. v. 1. 8 Gal. iv. 18, 14. 

42 Cor. xi. 7, oxdAo tH capi, dyyeAos Sarava, iva pe koAadily. 

° A small library could be gathered together all dealing with Paul’s 
illness. It must, however, on the whole be said that so far as the 
writers come to definite statement they depend upon inadmissible 
diagnosis from a distance which every honourable physican would 
refuse to credit. 

62 Cor. xii. 8. 


selma ei ree 


5 
. 


PAUL THE MAN 61 


cries’ for help, which, apparently unanswered, yet re- 
ceived a nothing less than divine answer :! 


My grace is sufficient for thee: 
For my strength is made perfect in weakness. 


Strength in weakness! That is Paul’s own description 
of the contrast we are studying. The enfeebled body 
is covered with the scars of frequent ill-treatment; he 
had endured a stoning,’ five times he had received 
thirty-nine stripes,* thrice had he been beaten with 
rods.* What that means may be gathered from prison 
officials who have been present at the disciplinary 
punishment of refractory criminals.’ Even after the 
fifth stroke blood often begins to spirt out, after twenty 
the back has been slashed into a bloody mass. In the 
tractate Makkoth of the Mishna we possess the instruc- 
tions for the synagogue attendant, whose duty it was to 
cairy out the scourging ‘with all his strength,’ while 
the judge read words from the Bible. By no means 
every delinquent had the physical strength to bear the 
thirty-nine stripes, many a one died under the execu- 
tioner’s hand; therefore delinquents were ‘assessed’ 
beforehand, e.g. to be able to endure only eighteen 


*2 Cor. xii. 9, dpxe? cou 7 xd pis pou 4 yap dvvapus ev doevela TeAccrau. 

22 Cor. xi. 25, cf. Acts xiv. 19. 

°2 Cor. xi. 24: The forty save one is the punishment inflicted by 
the Jewish spiritual court of law. The note is of great importance ; it 
illuminates as with a flash of lightning an almost forgotten piece of 
Paul’s biography: his experiences with the officials of the Synagogue 
(mostly in the diaspora). He never formally separated himself from 
Judaism and to the end remained under the discipline of the Synagogue. 
The misdemeanours which were punished with Scourging were 
amongst others breach of commandments regarding food and other 
ritual enactments. 

*2 Cor. xi. 25: Punishment by officials of the state, cf. Acts xvi. 29. 

*Compare the fragment The Execution in Tolstoi’s Resurrection, 
Book I., chap. xlvi. [In the English translation by Louise Maude, this 
_ account is relegated to an appendix.—W.E. W.] 


62 PAUL 


lashes. The paragraphs of this tractate’ are a terrific 
commentary on that simple line in second Corinthians. 
In addition to the physical torment of this violently 
executed Jewish punishment there was also the agony 
of soul which Paul must have experienced as over and 
over again during the lashes of the attendant the 
mechanical reading of prescribed lines from the law’ 
by the officiating scribe wounded his inner being as with 
corroding scorn : 


If thou will not observe 

To do all the words of this law, 
That are written.in this book, 
That thou mayest fear 

This glorious and fearful name, 
Jahwe thy God... 


Then will Jahwe make thy plagues wonderful 
And the plagues of thy seed, 

EKyen great plagues and of long continuance, 
And sore sicknesses and of long continuance. 


To all this must be added privations of hunger and frost, 
of thirst, heat and shipwreck* and the martyrdom of 
frequent arrest.* And Paul may often have experienced 
in his own person, what he had observed in his com- 
panion, Timothy :° that the drink of water found at last 
by the parched traveller, had the seeds of evil disease 


1 Hasiest for reference in the small editions by Hermann L. Strack, 
Leipzig, 1910, and Gustav Holscher, Tiibingen, 1910. 

*The tractate Makkoth, § 14, prescribes the terrible words, Deut. 
xxviii. 58 f., which in their content are closely allied to the words quoted 
by Paul in Gal. iii. 10, from Deut. xxvii. 26. It may be imagined with 
what feelings one who had been scourged would afterwards himself 
read and cite these words. 

32 Cor. xi. 25-27. 

4So Paul himself says, 2 Cor. xi. 23 and vi. 5. Long before he was 
arrested in Jerusalem, he had often been in prison. That is the start- 
ing-point of the Hphesian hypothesis (see above, p. 17 note). 

PAM LIM ay. 123: 


PAUL THE MAN 63 


hidden in it. If Paul could on occasion declare with a 
smile : 


in everything and in all things I have learned the secret, both 
to be filled and to be hungry,! 


the list of his sufferings in second Corinthians (only 
apparently monotonous) speaks clearly enough.’ It 
reflects the difficulties of climate to which the ailing 
man was exposed, but also the whole cruelty of fanati- 
cism, which like a consuming fire rages through the 
religious history of the East, from the slaughter of the 
Priests of Baal to the stoning of Stephen, and from the 
Alexandrian Jewish pogroms under Caligula to the 
Armenian massacres of Adana, Tarsus and Antioch in 
1909 ; not to mention all the cruelties of the World-war, 
far outstripping all ancient statistics of murder. 

And now we see that this man, ailing, illtreated, 
weakened by hunger and perhaps by fever, completed 
such a life-work that, as a mere physical performance, 
challenges our admiration. Just measure out the mile- 
age which Paul travelled by water and land, and your- 
self try to follow the course of his journeys. You sit, 
with your viséd pass and diplomatic recommendations 
in your pocket, in a comfortable modern carriage on the 
Anatolian railway, and travel in the evening twilight 
easily towards your destination on the permanent way 
which has been forced through rocks and over streams 
by engineering skill and dym4pnite. While, having 
already booked your rooms by telegraph, you are 
carried rapidly and without effort over the pass, you see 
in the fading light of evening, deep below you, the 
ancient road, narrow and stony, that climbs the pass, 
and upon that road a few people on foot and riding 


1 Phil. iv. 12, év ravti kai ev racw peptnpat, Kal xopralec au Kat reway. 
SaeOles<iveaa it, © Of. also i, 8 ff. 3 iv... 77 fh: vi & ff: xis. 10: 
1 Cor. iv. 9-138; xv. 31 f£.; Rom. viii. 35 f. 
oe 


64 PAUL 


donkeys, or in exceptional cases perhaps on horseback, 
are hurrying along towards the crowded, dirty inn. They 
are bound to reach it before darkness finally settles in, 
for the night is no friend to man; the wild dogs of the 
inhospitable shepherds set themselves raging in the way, 
robbers are ready to take money, clothes, and beasts, 
and the demons of fever threaten the overheated and 
weary in the cold night wind, which is already blowing 
down irom the side valleys. 

Or exchange for once the modern Levant hotel with 
its lift and French cookery tor the wretched kahn at 
the summit of the pass of the Syrian Gates on the way 
to Antioch and camp for a single night on the hard wood | 
of the dirty plank-bed tormented by impure air, cold 
and vermin. Or if you travel from the east to Italy on 
a great Mediterranean steamer from Bremen, you may 
say to yourself: the storm that tosses us about in the 
gloomy night and gives us a taste of sea-sickness, but 
for all that cannot turn this immense ship aside from 
its course, at the same time dashes the little sailing 
ship, which without stars or compass is at the mercy of 
the billows, upon a reef or sandbank, and the few who 
manage to save themselves on scraps of wreckage are 
driven about for days starving on the waves. 

It is Paul we have seen on that darkening road up 
the pass; it is the wearied Paul who seeks repose on 
the hard wood; and it was Paul who was tossed about 
on a broken ship’s plank for a day and a night,* Paul, 
the man who suffered so much, hungry and thirsty. I 
had the great good fortune in 1906 and 1909 on my two 
journeys to travel over almost all Paul’s routes. One 
of the most lasting impressions of these journeys, made 
for the most part with all modern conveniences for 
travel, is inexpressible astonishment at the purely 


12 Cor, xi. 25, vuxOypepov év tT) BvOO rerotnka. 


PAUL THE MAN 65 


physical achievement of Paul the traveller, who could 
truly say, not without ground, that he buffeted his body 
and brought it into subjection like a slave.! Strength 
in weakness ! 


Another of the great contradictions of his nature is 
this: Paul is of great humility yet he is also capable 
of uttering words of the most majestic self-confidence. 
Especially characteristic here is the confession of first 
Corinthians :? 

I am the least of the apostles . . . But by the grace of God 


Tam what Iam... I laboured more abundantly than they all ; 
yet not I, but the grace of God which was in me. 


Those are no mere phrases, but genuine confessions ; 
with an almost Greek horror of arrogance? there is com- 
bined a virile sense of power: before God a worm, 
before men an eagle. 

é 


Dependent upon his bodily weakness, but no doubt 
also bound up with his whole structure of soul, is the 
alternation of times of deep inner depression with 
wonderful moments of complete freedom and an in- 
toxicated sense of victory in having overcome the 
world. Out of his own experience he speaks of ‘the 
earnest expectation of the creation’* and no less of 
being cast down, of being straitened, of distresses, 
anxieties, of heavy cares;° longing for death thrills 
through his soul,° and yet the dissolution of this earthly 
tent is to him a horrible thought.’ Out of his own 


*1 Cor. ix. 27, trwridlw pov rd cOpa Kat Sovraywys. 

71 Cor. xv. 9 f., eyo yap «ius 6 €Adyuoros t&v drocrddov . . 
xapite dé Geod cipl 6 ciue . . . wepicodrepov airav mdévtwv exoriaca, odk 
éyw dé GAAS 7 xdpis TOD Heod orv éxoi. 

* Compare the frequent warnings in Paul’s letters against boasting. 

4 Rom. viii. 19 ff., 7 droxapaSoxia ths Kricews. 

°2 Cor. iv. 8 ff.; vi. 4 ff; 1 Cor. iv. 9 ff. and other places. 

Pint 25: T2\Gor.y? abi: 

5 


66 PAUL 


personal experiences he has discovered the simplest and 
most powerful chord expressive of all human suffering 
in the de profundis of Romans :? 


O wretched man that I am! 


And the same man yet again glories in being completely 
raised above all the troubles and perplexities of this 
life? It is bad psychology to refer the words of depres- 
sion entirely to Paul’s pre-Christian days, and to make 
Paul the Christian speak only in words from the 
heights. Even as a Christian Paul was still swallowed 
up by the deep, just as surely as no doubt while still a 
pious Jew he had seen the mountains from which his 
help came. 


Closely connected with this great contradiction of 
his nature is another. Paul is by nature tender. He 
weeps and he even speaks with antique simplicity of 
his weeping. He enters a new place of his missionary 
work with timidity, with ‘fear and trembling.’* He is 
capable of the deepest feeling, calls the mother of a 
friend in a popular good-humoured way his own mother,’ 
writes as a father,® can even feel like a mother,’ emotion 
and love flow from his lips. The intimate letter to the 
Philippians and the gentle letter to Philemon are 
monuments of this tenderness. The great thirteenth 
chapter of first Corinthians, too, the song of songs of. 
brotherly love, welled forth from the depths of this 
sensitive soul. 

At times, however, this tender, gently smiling Paul, 


1 Rom. vil. 24, tadairwpos éyo avOpwrros. 

*'To the highest degree in Rom. viii. 36 ff. 

$2 Cor. 11.4; Phil 1118 + ef) Acts xxyl Jig 1 

42 Cor. il. 3, &v doOevela kat ev POBw Kal ev Tpduw TOAD. 
5 Rom. xvi. 18. 

61 Thess. ii. 11; 1 Cor. iv. 14 f., ete. 

i Galiiv. 193 etri hess aris, 


PAUL THE MAN 67 


who can sometimes be so tolerant of others,! is hard; 
he writes like a jailer, he is angry and his words of 
wrath strike the offender like lightning.? The effect of 
such words upon those for whom they are intended is 
crushing, and his opponents scornfully object® that one 
‘whose bodily presence’ is so ‘weak,’ should when 
absent write such ‘ weighty and powerful letters.’ Even 
more characteristic is what Paul himself experienced of 
the effect upon the Corinthians‘ of a letter (no longer 
in existence) written in deep depression.® The letter’s 
first effect was to give the church great pain; perhaps 
the Corinthians tore it up in the first blaze, of anger, or 
later purposely destroyed it, because there was in it so 
much that hurt them—that would be the easiest explana- 
tion of the disappearance of this no doubt magnificent 
letter. 

In particular he is boundlessly severe towards 
his opponents ; not shrinking from the bitterest tone, 
he coins polemical phrases of an absolutely fanatical 
coarseness,” whose death-dealing sharpness is scarcely 
to be felt, when excited aftercomers, who are not worthy 
to unloose the latchet of his sandals, presume to take 
his sword in hand at the present day. He sometimes 
even doubts the genuineness of his opponents’ convic- 
tions, thus showing a classical instance of intolerance.’ 

One observation is here especially typical : Paul is 
full of irony, of inexorable, biting irony.’ Only so are 
many of his words to be understood ; they vibrate like 


Cf. especially his attitude towards the ‘ weak’ brethren in 1 Cor. 
vill. and Rom. xiv. 1—xv. 13. 

* Compare the beginning of Galatians and many other places. 

32° Cor. x. 10. 

42 Cor. vii. 8 ff. 

° 2 Cor. ii. 4; cf. above p. 14. 

° Gal. v. 12; Phil. iii. 2,18; 2 Cor. xi. 13 ff., 20; Rom. xvi. 18. 

Pon eee 4 <i 17 yi, 12. 

§ Cf. as a specially typical example 2 Cor. xi. 


68 PAUL 


the ring of a dagger, when they are understood as 
ironical words used in conflict. 

This mixture of mildness and severity in Paul 
reminds us, as does much else, of Luther ; compare, for 
instance, the reformer’s delightful letter to his son 
‘Hansichen and his deadly words of controversy against 
the Pope. 


It is understandable that a personality containing 
such violent contrasts has made very varied impressions 
on people. There has probably seldom been anyone at 
the same time hated with such fiery hatred and loved 
with such strong passion as Paul. 

He sometimes quotes things his opponents said 
against him, which while they are no doubt caricatures, 
are most instructive. He is, they say, humble when 
present, but when absent full of courage ;' he can write 
great and powerful letters, but his bodily presence is 
weak and his speech of no account ;* he wants to talk 
people over to his side;* he does not write what he 
really thinks ;* he is beside himself.° They do not 
even shrink from accusing him behind his back of deceit, 
uncleanness and guile,®° and to whisper of dishonest 
dealings which he has been guilty of in money matters.’ 
In hght of this the meticulous care which Paul gave 
to the subject of collections is understandable. These 


humble people of his churches whose means of liveli- _ 


hood was reckoned in obols and denarii, these envious 
people, who themselves, as Paul once confessed with a 
sigh,® ‘eat and devour one another,’ and who by taking 
their miserable quarrels about matters of no account to 
be settled by heathen judges, exposed the brotherhood 


19 Cor. x. 1, 2. 292 Cor. x. 10. 3 Gali: 
49 Cor. i. 13. 8 Cor, viele. 
61 Thess. ii. 3 f, 72 Cor. xii. 16. 


8 Gal. v. 15, dAAnAovs Saxvere Kal Kare Oiere. 


. 
“Ff 


‘ 


PAUL, THE MAN 69 


to mockery,’ these people (and this is the reverse side 
of the social structure of early Christianity) were ready 
to listen to common calumnies and good-for-nothing 
gossip against a great man. According to the Apostle’s 
own testimony at any rate there were not lacking in the 
Corinthian church people who formerly had been none 
too scrupulous as to meum and tuwwm—‘ thieves’ and 
‘extortioners,’ says Paul bluntly.” Certain though it is 
that Paul’s persecutors with all this gossip did him 
bitter injustice, there yet remained in other accusations 
perhaps a little grain of truth, though made use of in 
an untruthful way. This can be seen particularly 
clearly in one case: Paul’s impulsiveness, shown on one 
occasion in sudden alteration of plans of travel, was 
used by his opponents to put him in an unfavourable 
light: they accused him of frivolously saying yes, yes 
and no, no in the same breath.® 

There is however no lack of evidence for an 
absolutely enthusiastic devotion to him (a devotion 
genuinely Oriental and southern in its naive fire). Paul 
reminds the Galatians of the time of their first love, 
when they received him ‘as an angel of God, even as 
Christ Jesus’ Himself, and would have counted them- 
selves happy if they could have ‘plucked out their own 
eyes’ for him.* The saints in Philippi loved him more 
deeply because with greater constancy, as the letter 
addressed to them shows. 

From all this we may draw conclusions about Paul’s 
personality: being himself both tender and severe he 
had made the people with whom he came into contact 
friends: or opponents. He did not know the comfort- 
able quietness of the ordinary man. His way in life 
lay through the fires and tempests of love and hate. 





11 Cor: vi. 1-11. : 
2khérra. . . . dpmayes, 1 Cor. vi. 11, compare with 10. Cf. Eph. 
iv. 28. 


SA Core th 17, 4Gal. iv. 18 ff. 


70 PAUL 


That the man Paul, who has up to now been our 
study, was a man of the ancient world, goes without 
saying. But as a warning against every attempt at 
modernisation it is well to formulate the sentence 
expressly. Nevertheless it certainly ought not to be 
forgotten that in the great movements of the soul of 
man the difference between the so-called modern man 
and the man of antiquity is not so very great. But the 
differences which are really present are recognised by 
the eye sharpened by historical research. 

The world of Paul is that ancient world, which we 
attempted to sketch m outline, and the ancient simple 
cosmogony with its above and below is the background 
of his religious certainties. Genuinely ancient is his 
belief in demons, which is to be discerned in a number 
of places in his letters. Just as innumerable men of 
antiquity, whose leaden tablets inscribed with bann and 
curse are still preserved, ‘delivered’! their opponents 
over to the gods of the underworld, so he ‘ delivers ’? the 
blasphemers Hymeneeus and Alexander the copper- 
smith to Satan. Similarly he advises the Corinthians 
solemnly to ‘deliver’ an evil-doer to Satan.’ The part- 
ing scene at Miletus * may be taken as the counterpart to 
this, at which Paul says to the elders of the Ephesian 
church :— 

And now brethren I commend you to God and to the word 
of His grace. 
He has much to say of the wiles of Satan,’ but he is 
confident that God will shortly crush the evil one under 
the feet of the saints.° 
We see Paul as a man of the ancient world also in 


1Cf. Licht vom Osten, p. 256 f. 21 Tim. i. 20. 

Sl OOr. Vy. 3-0. * Acts xx. 32. 

51 Thess. ii. 18; 2 Thess. ii. 9; 1 Cor. vii. 5; 2 Cor. ii. 11; iv. 4; 
XLS RIL 7 3/ Eph vit: Lim yeloese Linea 

6 Rom. xvi. 20. 


PAUL THE MAN 71 


_ every case where the civilisation of the ancient great 
city appears as the background of his mission. His 
figurative language, very different from that of Jesus, 
the Galilean, which, fresh as the dew and gay with 
colour, is full of country life, reflects the life of the 
great cities of antiquity ; we see in it the games of the 
stadium,’ military affairs,’ slavery,® legal practice and 
the law courts,‘ then the theatre,’ home and family 
life,° building,’ handicrafts,* commerce,’ sea voyaging.” 
Probably it was military and legal affairs" which had 
most interest for him. Illustrations taken from country 
life are, on the other hand, but few and mostly more 
conventional than the others. 

From single passages in the letters, if we have learnt 
how to look at fragments, we can reconstruct scenes 


11 Cor. ix. 24; Phil. iii. 14; 2 Tim. iv. 7 £ (this passage is written 
just in the style of an inscription recording a contest for a wager, 
Lncht vom Osten, 4th Ed., p. 262), ete. 

21 Thess. v. 8; Eph. vi. 10 ff.; Philemon 2; 1 Cor. ix.7; xiv. 8; 
2 Cor. x. 3 ff; Phil. ii. 25; 2 Tim. ii. 3. The illustration of the 
triumphal procession is especially characteristic, 2 Cor. ii, 14; 
Col. ii. 15. 

3’ Numerous passages. 

*Numerous places, especially the usage of the ideas xataxpivew, 
condemn, and dicot, justify (= acquit), When Paul (Rom. iii. 24) 
especially emphasises the fact that God acquits us for nothing (with- 
out our paying him anything, dwpeav) there may be behind this picture 
the thought of some earthly judge who wished to be bribed. (Cf. 
Acts xxiv. 26, see above, p. 46 f.) 


eh Cor, iv..9; Rom. 1. 32. 6 Many places. 

71 Cor. iii, 10 ff, cf. particularly the important illustration of the 
building. 

S Rom. ix. 21. 

Cline 44; 2 Cor. 1. 22; v. 0; ii. 17. 

UP eae ote, 1.9, 


1 'This sphere has always received great interest ; cf. the collection 
of references, Licht vom Osten, 4th Hd., p. 270 f. It may be worked 
out to-day in a more plastic way, as the researches of Otto Lger 
indicate. 


72 PAUL 


from the life of the people in the great cities of an- 
tiquity.. We can imagine the bustle in the macellum 
at Corinth, the bazar of the butchers, where the various 
sorts of meat offered for sale occasioned serious scruples 
of conscience to timid Christians.” Afterwards, if the 
meat, which had perhaps been offered to idols, was 
roasted and served at table in the house of a heathen, 
it might make grave difficulties for any Christians who 
may chance to have been invited to the dinner-party.’ 
The Gnosis-Christian, who boasted his enlightenment 
and feasted freely with the heathen even in the heathen 
temple, was a stumbling-block to the ascetically timid 
‘weak’ brother,* who as he watched him with venomous 
glances, was indeed ‘weak in faith,’° but strong in 
‘judging’® and in malicious ‘evil-speaking.’’ Or we 
almost hear the clink of tribute and custom money in 
the office of the collectors,* amongst whom there were, 
as Paul hints with a smile, some coarse worthies who 
did not merely require one to pay but also to tremble.? 
Like summer lightning Paul’s sharp irony plays over 
the learned class: the heathen orators with their 
‘wisdom’ and artificial rhetoric’® and the Jewish 
scribes, who will only do business when you offer them 
miracles." 

We have already spoken of the quarrels of those 
who rush to the magistrate about some pitiably small 


1On this point the words of Jesus are certainly very much richer ; 
they are nothing else than classical documents for information about 
the people of Palestine. 


21 Cor. x. 25. 31 Cor. viii. 10. 41 Corsxso ian 
5 Rom. xiv. 1. 61 Cor. x. 29. 
il iCornx. 30; 8 Rom. xiii. 7 (a). 


*Rom. xiii. 7 (0). In the original there is a pretty play upon 
words between ¢épos, tribute, and PdBos, fear: rd tov Popov Tov Popov 

. TO TOv PoBov Tov hdoBov. 

eLUCOry iLO pied. 

tet Gor..1.20;522: 


PAUL THE MAN 73 


matter,’ and of the dark picture of the moral corruption 
of the great city.” Sharp instantaneous pictures pass 
betore us in the catalogue of domestic virtues in the 
letters to the Colossians* and Laodiceans (Ephesians) ‘ 
and also in the warnings of the pastoral letters which 
suggest such a wide experience of life. They allow us 
in particular an inner view of family life. The apostolic 
ethos is connected with the civilisation of the world in 
general by a broad basis of moral convictions common 
to the whole of antiquity.’ 

Paul as a man of the ancient world stands out 
wonderfully clearly as we read his letters amid the 
ruins of the cities he evangelised, which in our day have 
been cleared of rubbish and again brought to light. 
We may, for example, sit in the theatre at Ephesus, 
which witnessed that tumult of Acts xix., oppressed with 
the sultry loneliness of the Ephesian countryside and 
read in a letter written at Ephesus of the Apostle’s 
many Ephesian opponents.® Or on the heights of the 
Acro-Corinthus, with the sea to the right of us that 
bears the sailing-ships to Ephesus and Palestine, and 
to the left the Gulf of Corinth pointing towards Rome, 
we may open the Epistle to the Romans, the letter in 
which there below in Old Corinth Paul surveyed his 
field of work from Jerusalem to Rome and to Spain.’ 
Then the Paul of ancient times, the subject of the 
Emperor Nero, the contemporary of Seneca, stands out 
a living man. 


The contemporary of Seneca! The Christian of a 
later generation who manufactured a correspondence 


Cor yyi.; 1 ff. 7 Rom. i. 24 ff.; Gal. v. 19 ff, ete. 

3 Col. iii. 12—iy. 1. 4 Eph. v. 15—vi. 9. 

°Cf. Licht vom Osten., 4th Ed., p. 262 ff., the hints about ancient 
popular ethics in the New Testament. The theme would repay a 
more exact study. 

Ol Cor.txvi.. 9: 7 Rom. xv. 19, 93 f, 


74 PAUL 


between Paul and Seneca, placed the Apostle in direct 
relations with the literary man. But as a matter of 
fact the two men had no contact with one another. 
Paul did once stand, an accused man, before Seneca’s 
brother, Gallio, the Proconsul of Achaia.t The theme 
‘Paul and Seneca,’ * which would be more interesting 
to a later age, may have arisen out of this occurrence 
at Corinth. But Paul is not to be classed with the 
philosopher. Seneca belongs to the select upper class, 
Paul belongs to the great mass of the weary and heavy- 
laden. To the aristocratic men of letters of his day, if 
they ever thought of: him at all, he would have been 
nothing more than the homo novus. But—and here we 
must further develop a point of view already suggested * 
—he was not particularly striking to his own age. Not 
a single contemporary historian mentions him. This 
‘selentium sceculi, which has occasionally been used by 
the bodyless doctrinaire theorists of our day as evidence 
against the genuineness of Paul’s epistles, is the 
perfectly natural consequence of the actual position of 
Paul in the world of his day. He was indeed no man 
of letters, whose works aroused interest, no man of 
learning, with impressive theories of culture. The 
appearance of this one religious travelling preacher 
amongst the many apostles of other cults in the great 
cities surrounding the Mediterranean would in those 
days gain no more attention. than would in our day the 
activities of an American Adventist in Hamburg or 
Berlin. The word of his opponents, that he was 
‘unknown,’* which no doubt meant that he was not 


1 Acts xviii. 12 ff. Cf. below in Appendix. 

2 Cf. lately Rudolf v. Delius, Zur Psychologie der rom. Kaiserzett, 
Munchen and Leipzig (1913), p. 1-20 (with several mistaken inferences), 
and Hrnst v. Dobschiitz, Begegnungen und Briefwechsel in Geschichte 
und Legende, in Geschichtliche Studien, presented to Albert Hauck, 
Leipzig, 1916, p. 3. 

3 Cf. above, p. 56. +2 Corsvied. 


PAUL THE MAN 75 


recognised in the circle of the genuine apostles of Jesus, 
contains a profound truth when applied to the position 
of Paul in the world. 

In this Paul’s position is utterly different from that 
of Luther. From 1517 onwards Luther had a position 
of great publicity, as a man of letters, reformer, politician 
and organiser. Paul remained in obscurity. It was 
only long after his death that he became a person of 
historical importance, 

Just as Paul described in glowing words in first 
Corinthians’ the distance that separated the over- 
whelming majority of his converts from the upper-class 
with its culture, power and noble birth, so too in his 
own person he was sensible of this distance and ex- 
presses it when he speaks of himself as ‘rude in speech,’ ? 
deals ironically with ‘the wisdom of the world,’* and, 
in contrast with the wise, the scribes and the disputers, 
characterises himself as the messenger of divine ‘ foolish- 
ness, * or when he regards the wise just as much as the 
unlearned as objects of his mission work.’ This sense 
of contrast with the great world also is expressed in 
the bitterness of that passionate confession that God 
has set forth the Apostles ‘last,’ as ‘filth’ and ‘off- 
scouring’ of humanity, fit to serve as a ‘spectacle’ to 
the world, to angels and to men (like the beasts and the 
criminals in the circus).° 

If it be objected that Paul’s letters, which supply us 
to-day with so many difficulties in exegesis, must have 
been too ‘high’ for simple people, and that therefore Paul 
must have had an eye to a circle of readers drawn from the 
educated public, it must be answered that the difficulty 
oi interpretation proves nothing against our contention, 
There are contemporary papyrus letters which are 

11 Cor. i, 26 ff. 22 Cor. xi. 6. 


31 Cor. ii. 1 ff, 6-10; iii, 19 ff., ete. 
41 Cor. i. 18-20. 5 Rom. i, 14. 61 Cor. iy. 9-18. 


~~ 


76 PAUL 


certainly products of the lower classes; no doubt they 
were understood by their recipients, and in spite of that 
(or ought I to say—because of that?) are incredibly 
difficult for us to understand. In addition to this, 
numerous difficulties have been artificially introduced 
by the dogmatic misuse of Paul’s letters. ‘Some 
things hard to be understood’ naturally remain: it was 
not Mark Rutherford who first correctly noticed that,’ 
but a much older reader.? But nevertheless those six 
unknown people,’ Speratus, Nartzalus, Cittinus, Donata, 
Secunda, and Vestia, the martyrs of Scilli, who on the 
17th of July, 180, were obliged to state in evidence, 
before the Proconsul, what was in their box, certainly 
did not speak of unintelligible hieroglyphics but of the 
treasure of their souls, when they answered :* 


the books used by us, and besides these the letters of the holy 
man Paul. 


Even to-day there are numbers of Christians, un- 
learned indeed, but knowing their Bibles and experienced 
in life, who in the main understand Paul’s letters well. 
Lutheran peasants, Methodist tradesmen, Anglican 
colonists, Moravian women, Stundists of Michel Hahn, 
Presbyterian miners join with the simple confessors of 
Scilli in no small numbers. That Paul himself had the 
consciousness that he was writing for simple people, 


1 Letters to Three Friends (cf. The British Weekly, No. 1963, June, 
1924, p. 232): ‘Saint Paul, I confess, is hard, and I never read him 
without feeling that I have to stretch myself mightily in order to 
accommodate myself to him. In fact the last time I tried the Epistle to 
the Romans I had to give it up.’ 

22 Pet. iii. 16, dvovonra twa. 

3 ‘Plainly all plebians,’ says Harnack, Die Mission und Ausbreitung 
des Christentums im den ersten dret Jahrhunderten, ii, 2nd Kd., 
Leipzig, 1906, p. 238. English Translation: The Mission and EHa- 
pansion of Chrostrianity, vol. ii., p. 278, note 2. 

4 Akten der Scillatanischen Martyrer (Greek text edited by Usener), 


ai ka? nuas BiBAo Kal ai mpocemitovrois érictoAal IlavAov Tod dciov avdpés. 


PAUL THE MAN 77 


‘babes’ and the ‘weak’ is shown by occasional ex- 
pressions of his own.’ 

Does Paul lose anything, when as a homo novus he 
is contrasted with the leading classes of his day? Yes, 
he loses something: the stilts he has been given. And 
he is set upon his own feet, upon the value of his own 
personality. We measure him no more by what he 
received, or ought to have received from without, but 
by what he was originally. Through the inexhaustible 
springs of the power of personality that was in him, 
this homo novus, Paul, standing in his own place, 
amongst the common people of the ancient world, rises 
high above the mass that surrounded him. Yes, his 
figure rises, too, above his famous contemporaries who 
sprang from the upper class. There is no single 
person of Nero’s days who has left such permanent 
marks on the souls of men as Paul the homo novus. 


The cosmopolitan trait that this unknown man here 
and there exhibits is the single silent prophecy of his 
future influence on the history of the world. Paul of 
Tarsus was not confined by the walls of his workshop 
or by the narrow, gloomy courts of his Ghetto. He 
was a citizen of the world; to the Jews a Jew, to the 
Hellenists a Hellenist.2 His attitude was friendly to- 
wards the Roman state of which he was a citizen; 
he on occasion even threw out the tremendous thought, 
that the government of the state is something divine, 
and that power is of the essence of that government.* 
What fruit have these few words in the tentmaker’s 
letter borne later in the ecclesiastical and civil theories 
of the state! 

Moreover, his great soul without learned training 
had absorbed much from the cosmopolitan civilisation 


11 Cor. iii. 1 ff. ; Rom. vi. 19. 21 Cor. ix. 20 f. 
3 Acts xxil. 20 ff. 4 Rom. xiii. 1-7. 


78 PAUL 


of the east and west which was roaring around him, 
and not least that common stock of ethics." What 
might be called his secular education was not drilled 
into him, but breathed in. Some things he had picked 
up from the rhetoricians, he was acquainted with pithy 
sayings of the poets and lines that live in the mouths 
of the people;* he had no knowledge of the rhythm- 
beating of the Asiatic prose-writers, which shows his 
good sense.* He had his own ideas about heathenism, 
gained from personal observation. He used indeed the 
current controversial methods of the Jews against wor- 
ship of idols and immorality,* but unlike the small- 
minded dogmatic zealot he did not hold that the 
heathen world as such was God-forsaken : 

Is He the God of the Jews only ? 


Is He not also of the Gentiles ? 
Yes, of the Gentiles also.5 


He finds amongst the heathen the unwritten law of 
conscience ;° heattributes moral sense to them,’ and he 
read upon the altars of heathenism a dedicatory in- 
scription which he interpreted as a longing cry after the 
One God.® 

That he did not interpret such an inscription like 
a modern student of inscriptions goes without saying. 
Paul looked at everything from the religious stand- 
point. . 

1Cf. above, p. 73. 

21 Cor. xv. 33; Acts xvii. 285 Tite1. 12: 

’Compare my thorough criticism of the hypothesis of Friedrich 
Blass, Theol. Literaturzeitung, 31 (1906), col. 231 ff. 

4Rom. i. 18-32; Gal. i. 15. 

° Rom. ili. 29, 7) “Tovdaiwy 6 Geds povov; odyt Kal eOvGv; val Kat eOvar. 

6 Rom. ii. 14 f. A Ore ville 

8 Acts xvii. 23. A dedication probably similar to the inscription 
at Athens has been found in Pergamum; see below in Appendix. In 
spite of Eduard Norden’s famous investigation, I maintain that Luke’s 
reference to the Athenian inscription is to be accepted. 


PAUL THE MAN 79 


With this we come to the last clear characteristic 
in Paul’s character, to the characteristic which from 
historical point of view was his real driving force. 
The thing that made this significant man what he 
became was his religious endowment. 

Paul must be classed with the few people regarding 
whom that much misused phrase ‘religious genius ’ can 
rightly and fittingly be used. His was a mystical- 
prophetical nature, and compared with this character- 
istic the theological almost entirely disappears. His 
mysticism is not acting mysticism, but reacting 
mysticism, not a mysticism which strives after ab- 
sorption inthe Deity but a mysticism which receives 
communion with God as a gift of grace." He was 
mystical-prophetical also in the exceptional sense that 
he was capable of ecstatic experiences. True, he 
shuddered at the wild riot of unbridled wholesale 
ecstacies whether heathen? or Christian,? and in 
Corinth, where it once happened that some one in 
ecstasy cursed Jesus,* he waged war against speaking 
with tongues, although he recognised it in theory.” He 
himself indeed had the gift of tongues,’ and could tell 
of datable” ecstasies and special revelations of his own. 
Caught up into the third heaven, he had heard ‘un- 
speakable words’ ‘which it is not lawful for a man to 
utter.’° In hours when he was unable to pray the 
Spirit had suddenly taken possession and had prayed 
for him in his stead ‘with groanings which cannot be 
uttered.’® In grace it was granted to him to hear the 


! More is to be found on this question in Chapter VI. 


4*1. Cor. xii. 2: 31 Cor. xiv. 23. 
mLACOL: X11 0, 
51 Cor. xiv. 61 Cor. xiv. 18. 


72 Cor. xii. 2; Gal. ii. 1. For dating of ecstasies cf. Isaiah vi. 1: 
‘In the year that King Uzziah died. . .’ 
82 Cor. xii. 2-4. 9 Rom. viii. 26 f. 


80 PAUL 


voices from on high in words he could understand,’ and 
dreams became to him divine signs.? 

The enlightened Philistine feels superior to the 
delusions of the enthusiast, the dogmatic theologian 
with his love of order mistrusts the mystical or refers 
it to the faculty of philosophy or medicine. But the 
historical student of religion knows that, puzzling as 
they may be to him, the experiences of the great 
enthusiasts are the sources of power in the history 
of religion.? (Whoever takes away the mystical ele- 
ment from Paul, the man of antiquity, sins against the 
Pauline word :* 

Quench not the Spirit. 


Some have quenched the Spirit in putting a spirited 
-aulinism in place of the spirit-filled Paul, and what 


19 Cor. xii. 9; Acts xxii. 17 ff.:; ix. 4 ff, etc. ; xx. 23: xyinOae 

2 Acts xvi. 9; xxvil. 23 f. 

3 Hven Emil Brunner could know this and perhaps sometime will 
know it. Now (Die Mystik und das Wort, Tubingen, 1924) contrast- 
ing mysticism and ‘word’ (or even mysticism and faith), he only 
allows value to the ‘word’ (or to ‘ faith’), and overlooks the fact that 
the ‘word’ is the precipitate of the mystical experience of certain 
solitary souls who have been granted God’s grace, and that ‘faith’ in 
Paul’s use is only another expression for the living communion with 
God ‘in’ Christ. To contrast mysticism and the word is just as 
erroneous as for instance to contrast creative genius in music with 
musical score, or a charitable disposition with almsgiving. Compare 
the apposite remark of Paul Tillich, Rechtfertiqung und Zwerfel, 
Giessen, 1924 (Vortrage der theologischen Konferenz zu Giessen, 
39th Series), p. 27. ‘The ‘word’ which Brunner opposes to 
mysticism is only heard by the homo mysticus, that is he who is not 
a mystic in the actual practising sense, but who has received and 
continues to receive the fundamental revelation.’ Here also there is a 
valuable distinction between the ‘practising’ mystic and the ‘ revela- 
tion-mystic’; compare my discussion of ‘acting’ and ‘reacting’ 
mysticism, below, Chapter VI. 

41 Thess. v. 19, 76 zvetya py oBéevvvte. 

‘(I have tried to preserve the play upon words. The German is 
‘wenn er geistreichen Paulinismus an Stelle des Geisttragers Paulus 


PAUL THE MAN 81 


blazed and gleamed, like the tongues of fire on the heads 
of the Apostles at Pentecost, then chills us like the 
garish frozen light of an electrically illuminated Altar, 
with its hollow marble candles. For our part we will 
let the sacred fire burn, whose glow we trace in these 
letters. Paul is in the deepest sense of the word by 
the grace of God a homo religiosus. 


And this soul predestinated to the unspeakable 
mysteries of the most blessed communion with God 
was born into a human communion in which the tre- 
mendous experiences of heroic saints of bygone days, 
although hardened into text and letter, still made itself 
felt, a communion in which religion was everything. 
Paul, the religious man, was born and grew up a Jew. 


setzte, which is more literally ‘putting a clever Paulinism in place of 
the Spirit-carrier Paul.’—W.E. W.] 


to Nevrn 
Paar 
mips ‘ef 1s 
) ee 
yl i 





PAUL THE JEW 





CHAPTER IV 
PAUL THE JEW? 


ANYONE going through the streets of a great Hellenistic 
city on the Mediterranean sea-board in the days of the 
Emperors Augustus and Tiberius, after he had admired 
the splendid marble temples of the ancient gods and of 
the dieties more recently arrived from abroad, would 
also perhaps notice in one of the less pretentious 
quarters of the city a plainly-built place of worship 
without an altar. At best it had for ornament a frieze 
of vine-leaves or olive-branches, but otherwise it was 
without outward decoration, and within the walls were 
bare and there was no image of a god. As the visitor 
entered his eye fell on a chest containing parchment 
rolls, and if the attendant approached to unroll them 
for the stranger, he saw that they were written in Greek 
uncials. A reading desk and benches, candle-sticks and 
lamps completed the scanty furnishing of the room. 

In the cosmopolitan city of Alexandria, where the 
congregations which assembled round those parchment 
rolls had thousands of members, and had upon their 
lists high officials, rich merchants and well-known 
literary men, it may all have looked richer and more 
imposing. But in other cities that place of worship 
would not be better built or furnished than are the 


‘For this whole chapter see the highly interesting remarks of 
Ludwig Blau in his comprehensive review of the first edition of my 
Paul in Magyar-Zsid6 Szemle (Budapest), April, 1912, p. 123-139. 
Tam indebted to Herrn Pfarrer L, Musnai of Teaca (Siebenbiirgen) for 
a translation into German. 


(85) 


86 PAUL 


majority of the synagogues of the Oriental Jews to-day.’ 
An inscribed stone,’ discovered some decades ago, which 
in the imperial period stood over the entrance of a 
Corinthian Synagogue, bears the now mutilated words 
“Synagogue of the Hebrews” in the same extremely 
poor-looking rude script that is familiar to us in other 
Jewish inscriptions of the period. 


These unpretentious Jewish synagogues in the 
heathen world were a quiet, yet the history of religion 
tells us, a very effective protest against the worship of 
images in polytheistic heathenism. In the Mediter- 
ranean basin, within the zone of the olive-tree, more 
than one hundred and fifty Jewish congregations of the 
imperial period are now known to us.* Their actual 
number was certainly much greater.* In their Greek 
rolls of parchment around which Sabbath by Sabbath 
the congregation assembled to pray and to listen, they 
possessed a centre of religious power, to which great 
numbers of heathen were also attracted. The holy 
scriptures of the Old Testament in the Greek translation 
made by the Seventy brought the pious Jew of the dis- 
persion who outwardly had become a Hellenist, and 


1S$uch as I have myself visited, for example, in Constantinople, 
Chalkis and Tiberias. 

2 Copy and text in Licht vom Osten, 4th Ed., p. 13. 

$The Jews of Mesopotamia, Middle and Upper Egypt, and others, 
are not reckoned in this calculation. 

4'The map which accompanied the first edition of this book 
marked about 143 places outside Palestine where there were Jewish 
settlements; but in several places there were various Jewish congrega- 
tions; in Rome, for example, we know the names of nine synagogues. 
The list given by Emil Schiirer (Geschichte des Jtidischen Volkes, iii., 
4th Hd., Leipzig, 1909, p. 1 ff; English translation, A History of the 
Jewish People in the time of Christ, Division II., vol. ii, p. 220 ff.) 
and Johannes Oehler (Monatsschrift fiir Geschichte und Wissenschaft 
des Judentums, N.F.\53 [1909], pp. 292 ff., 443 ff., 525 ff.), can be con- 
siderably increased through discoveries, e.g. from Malta, Sicily, 
Sardinia and Higypt. 


PAUL THE JEW 87 


generally was no longer able to understand the Semitic 
original, into ever-renewed contact, not merely with 
the traditions which told of the fortunes of his 
fathers and the divine guidance they experienced, but 
also with the religious experiences and hopes of the 
prophetic men who had arisen as gigantic figures in the 
religious history of the Mediterranean world during the 
thousand years before Christ. 

The religion of the saints of old which was pre- 
served alive in the Semitic Old Testament had not been 
mummified in the Bible of the Seventy, yet it was not 
offered without some interposition of Hellenistic culture. 
The Septuagint translation represents not only a formal, 
but also a material Hellenisation of Jewish Monotheism. 
On some chief points this amounted to a considerable 
alteration. This Greek Bible, in the light of universal 
history a book of both east and west, is an accommoda- 
tion of the faith of the east to the western world,! and 
it made possible an extraordinarily effective propaganda 
for the One God of the Jews amongst heathen who had 
become weary and doubtful under polytheism. 


Though apparently estranged by his Hellenistic 
Bible from his Semitic home, the cosmopolitan Jew 
had for all that not lost his close connection with the 
centre of the Jewish religion, the temple in Jerusalem. 
Everyone of full age paid his tax of two drachme 
annually for Jerusalem, and whoever was in the least 
able to do so made a pilgrimage to the holy city. Just 
as to this very day in the weeks before the spring full- 
moon Jerusalem is the goal of many thousands of Jews, 
Christians, and Mohammedans, and just as the whole 


1 Further on this point in my article dealing with the subject, Die 
Hellenisterung des semitischen Monotheismus, Leipzig, 1903 (Re- 
printed from the Neue Jahrbiicher fiir das klassische Altertum, etc., 
1903). 


— \ A 


88 PAUL 


world of Islam from Constantinople to the Sunda 
Islands, and from the African colonies to China and 
Japan, vibrates with a continual movement towards 
Mecca, so also in those days, according to the words of 
a contemporary writer,’ many thousands out of many 
‘thousands’ of cities streamed up to Jerusalem to be 
present at the temple at each feast. Luke’ in the 
Pentecost narrative gives an international list of those 
who had been pilgrims to Jerusalem and were now 
settled down to live in the holy city. 

And there in the city of the temple the Jew felt 
himself, in spite of the foreign rule of Rome, proud as 
one specially favoured. with great privileges. Warnings 
in Greek and other languages inscribed in stone (one 
of these is preserved to this day)* forbade on pain of 
death any non-Jew from entering the holy enclosure of 
the temple.* At this abode of grace, where the sacred 
fire of the burnt-offerings was never extinguished, the 
longing of the pilgrims was satisfied. Here they heard 
the choirs of the singers and the sound of the harps; 
here sat the far-famed teachers of the law and gave of 
their best; here it was possible, if one was present in 
the sanctuary on the great day of Atonement, to par- 
ticipate, if it were but faintly, in the most solemn ritual 
service of the whole year. And here everyone breathed 
the sultry atmosphere of the most fervently nationalistic 
Messianic expectation. 

Strangely differmg types of Jew met one another at 
the Temple Court, and to-day one has but to shut one’s © 
eyes for a moment there in the broad open place before 
the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem, to see those 
ancient figures as of old; the rich Babylonian merchant, 
who we can scarcely think of as having undergone the 

1 Philo, De Monarchia ii. 1. 2 Acts ii. 9 ff. 


°'Text and copy Licht vom Osten, 4th Hd., p. 62 f. 
4Cf. also Acts xxi. 28, 31; xxii. 22. 


PAUL THE JEW 89 


weariness of the long caravan journey, fills the hand of 
the poor pilgrim from Rome, who begs to get together 
the money for his return journey ; the Cilician artisan 
and the Alexandrian scholar talk together shudderingly 
of the Galilean pilgrims whose ‘blood Pilate mingled 
with their sacrifices.’ ! 

Not a few of the strangers who came as pilgrims to 
the feast stayed on permanently or remained for a con- 
siderable time in the holy city, as the list of the day of 
Pentecost teaches us.? So there arose in Jerusalem 
itself synagogues whose congregations were formed of 
foreign Jews, in which fellow-countrymen were grouped 
together. Just as to-day in the east the Sephardim 
Jews and the Ashkenazim Jews, the Bochara Jews and 
the Yemenites generally, have their separate synagogues, 
and a similar arrangement is found in New York. The 
Book of Acts bears witness to the existence of a con- 
gregation formed of Jews from Africa and also of one 
made up of those from Cilicia and other parts of Asia 
Minor.* 

This synagogue of the Cilicians and those from Asia 
Minor in Jerusalem is probably the one to which the 
young Cilician Jew, Saul who is surnamed: Paul,» whose 
family probably originally came from Galilee,’ was 
attached while for a considerable time in his youthful 
years he stayed in Jerusalem. Here he will have found 
personal connections for those future journeys, of which 
he had then never dreamed, and in daily conversation 
with widely-travelled men he will have learned all about 
the geographical distribution of the Jewish dispersion 
along with the travel-routes. When Acts relates that 


1 Luke xiii. 1. Acts dit. 

* Of. Ludwig Blau, Papyri und Talmud in gegenseitiger Beleuchtung, 
Leipzig, 19138, p. 10. 

* Acts vi. 9, ek THs cwaywyns .. . Tov ard Kidixias cat Aoias. 

5 Acts xiii. 9, SadAos 82 6 cat IadaAos. 

6 Cf. below, p.;90 note 5. 


90 PAUL 


the Jew born in Tarsus’ was ‘brought up’ in Jeru- 
salem,’ it might at first sight be interpreted to mean that 
Paul came as a small child to Jerusalem.’ But judging 
from the general impression that Paul makes upon us 
as we know him, it is on the whole probable that the 
son of Tarsus spent his boyhood in the city of his birth. 
Paul appears so very much as the Septuagint-Jew, and 
alongside the Aramaic‘ he has such sovereign command 
of the Hellenistic lingua franca, that we are bound to 
assume a strong influence of the Septuagint and the 
Hellenistic world about him asa child. 

But though Palestine was his homeland, to him it 
was not only as the land of Israel, the land of his 
fathers in the sense it was to Jews in general, but 
according to an as yet unbroken family tradition it had 
been their real home: His family appears to have 
emigrated to Tarsus from Gishala in Galilee.° 


LActs xxil, 33 ixiol bel xxi.ag. 

2 Acts xxii. 3, dvatreOpappévos O€ ev TH TOAcL Tatty. But see below, 
p. 93 note 9. 

3 Later Paul had relations in Jerusalem. After his arrest his 
sister's son had put forth efforts on his behalf (Acts xxiii. 16 ff.). Did 
Paul’s sister live with her son in Jerusalem? Or was the nephew 
merely passing through the Holy City as a pilgrim to the feast ? 

4 Acts xxi. 40. 

‘The tradition found in Jerome (In Philem. 23 and De viris 
anlustribus, 5) which indicates the Galilean Gishala as Paul’s home, is 
so remarkable (because not to be in any way derived from a combina- 
tion of New Testament passages), that it cannot well be explained as 
a fiction. It probably is derived from the tradition of the family which 
traced back its origin to Gishala (cf. Theodor Mommsen, Zeitschrift fiir 
die neutestamentliche Wissenschaft, 2 [1901], p. 83). If Paul was 
born in Tarsus it is probable that his family was Galilean. It is 
strong evidence for this that he calls himself—with pride—‘a Hebrew 
of the Hebrews’ (“EBpatos é& EBpaiwv, Phil. iii. 5, cf. 2 Cor. xi. 22). By 
‘Hebrews’ in the Imperial period we are to understand Jews who 
spoke Aramaic. Cf. my remarks in Nikolaus Miller’s Die Inschriften 
der uidischen Katakombe am Monteverde zu Rom, published by Nikos 
A. Bees (Béys), Leipzig, 1919, p. 24 (also pp. 58, 72, 98, 106 f., 112, 173). 


PAUL THE JEW 91 


Jesus and Paul—were they actually fellow-country- 
men? Are the nations indebted to ‘Galilee of the 
Gentiles’! not only for the Great Light, but also for 

the light-bearer ? 
Peter and Paul—had the Aramaic of the Apostle of 
the Gentiles, when he spoke it in Jerusalem or Antioch,’ 
still a Galilean accent, a Peter-accent ?* There is noth- 
ing against the assumption, that the two protagonist- 
antagonists were also fellow-countrymen. 


About the childhood of Paul we can with a high 
degree of probability deduce some information from 
what he himself tells us. In his early days it must 
have impressed him, that he belonged to the tribe of 
Benjamin,‘ that by birth he also possessed the Roman 
citizenship,’ and that he, a Jew in the world, bore two 
names of different kinds,® the old Jewish famous name 
Saul (in Greek Saulos), and a worldly name, which 
sounded similar, was Latin in origin, and was also used 
in the Greek form Paulos. 

Even in middle life an experience of his inner life 
in childhood remained clear in his mind, and in Romans‘ 


1Cf. Matt. iv. 15 f. 

2Tt is probable that in the famous Paul-Peter scene at Antioch 
(Gal. ii. 11 ff.) Paul spoke Aramaic. For Peter was not very able in 
Greek; he required a dragoman when he travelled in the Jewish dis- 
persion (cf. the well-known words of Papias on Mark). 

3 Matt. xxvi. 73. Phil itis-o3; Rome aiel 

§ Acts xxi. 28. 

6 As even to-day is the case with pious Jews: cf. the information 
by Salomon Frankfurter in my work Die Urgeschichte des Christentwms 
im Lichte der Sprachforschung, Tubingen, 1910, p.16. The important 
essay of Hermann Dessau, Der Name des Apostels Paulus (Hermes, 45 
[1910], p. 347 ff.) has not convinced me. There was no change of 
names after the experience in Cyprus (Acts xiil.), however popular that 
idea may have become. 

7Rom. vii. 9-11, éym 8 eLov xwpls vopov more. eADodons Sé rhs 
évToAns 4 dpaptia avélnoev, eyo O aréfavov. Kal ebpéOy por} évToAy 7 


92 PAUL 


he gives moving expression of it. We might speak of 
it as his fall: 


For I was alive without the law once: but when the com- 
mandment came, sin revived and I died. And the commandment 
which was ordained to life, I found to be unto death. For sin 
taking occasion by the commandment, deceived me and by it slew 
me. 


Paul is thinking here in the first place of his earliest 
years of childhood, which in another place’ he speaks 
of as the time of childish irresponsibility ; then the 
feeling of guilt was unknown to him along with the 
idea of ‘sin.’ But there came a sorrowiul day never to 
be forgotten: the Law, the dumb parchment rolls of 
which he had seen from far as a child in the synagogue 
with awe and curiosity as they lay in their embroidered 
coverings *—that law itself entered for the first time 
peremptorily into his conscience, with its ‘thou shalt’ 
no doubt conveyed through the mouth of a parent. But 
the law’s ‘thou shalt’ was closely followed by the 
child’s ‘I will not’ and transgression. Paul does not 
say what the occasion was. But he indicates that this 
first conscious sin wrought terrible havoc in his sensitive 
young soul; he felt himself deceived, it was as though 
he had tasted death : 

I died. 


We do not know when this tragedy took place in 
the soul of the young Paul. Many of us know from our 
own experience what agony the sense of guilt can pro- 
duce even in childhood. Jewish teachers,*® at least in 
later times, have, it is true, assumed that up to its ninth 


eis wiv avrn eis Oavarov. yap apaptia apoppyv AaBotoa dua THs évToXs 
eEyratyoey pe kal dv adtys amexrewev. This passage has suffered much 
at the hands of doctrinaire exegesis through misinterpreting the ‘1’. 
LCor xii. 11: 22 Cor. iii. 14. 
’ Tanchuma (a late commentary on the Pentateuch) on Gen. iii. 
22. 


PAUL THE JEW 93 


year the child knows nothing of sin; but then with the 
awakening of the ‘evil instinct’ sin begins. 

More important than the explanation in detail of 
that experience is the fact which can pretty certainly be 
inferred from it, that Paul, who had experienced this 
fall, cannot have had a sunny, cheerful youth. Law, 
Sin and Death already in early life cast their gloomy 
shadows in the soul of the gifted boy. Yes, even 
following his own suggestions, slavish terror! might be 
indicated as the prevailing tone in the mind of one who 
‘from a child had known the Scriptures’? and was 
being matured more and more into a conscious Jew. 
Terror, not only the fear of God in the old Biblical 
sense,* but the desperate anxiety of one ‘born under the 
law ’* about his soul’s salvation : 


O wretched man that I am! 
Who shall deliver me from the body of this death? 


Even after Paul became a Christian such a cry was 
still possible to him,° when the old struggle awoke again 
in him. 


The terror of this struggle drove Paul into the 
sternest tendency of Judaism. Paul became a Pharisee.® 
Perhaps this was even in Tarsus; we know that the 
Pharisee propaganda extended over sea and land,’ and 
his parents appear to have been Pharisees before him.* 
But in Jerusalem, whither he had emigrated and stayed 
for a considerable time in order to make a thorough 
study of the law,° at the feet of the famous Rabban 

1 Rom. viii. 15. 22 Tim. iii. 15. 

32 Cor. vii. 1; Rom. iii. 18. *Gal. iv. 4. 

° Rom. vil. 24, TaAalmupos eye dvOpwros: ris pe pdoerat ex Tod odparos 
Tov Oavarov Tovrov ; 

6 Phil. iii. 5; Acts xxvi. 5; xxiii. 6. 7 Matt. xxiii. 15. 

8 Acts xxiii. 6 must be so interpreted. 

*This is probably the best interpretation of ‘brought up,’ Acts 
xxii. 3. The greatest teachers are the ‘ fathers.’ 


94 PAUL 


Gamaliel,t he clearly was a supporter not only of 
Pharisean pietism, but, within that extraordinarily 
active and precise body, of the most fanatical enthusi- 
asts. Comparing himself with those of his own age 
who used to sit beside him in the class-room memoris- 
ing the Rabbinic traditions, he could justifiably speak 
of himself as being ‘more exceedingly zealous for the 
traditions of my fathers.’* He had in those days shared 
to the full in the Puritanical exultation of the scribe 
who knew the law: 


A guide of the blind, 

A light of them which are in darkness, 
An instructor of the foolish, 

A teacher of babes. 


these words of the letter to the Romans * written decades 
afterwards still shine with the reflected splendour of his 
own proud self-consciousness. 

On the other hand, his clear and sincere eye was not 
blind to the contrast, which while constantly showing 
itself in his own life in the opposition between willing 
and doing,* was present, as everywhere in the world, in 
his surroundings, as a contradiction between external 
piety and inner depravity. He had detected one zealot 
in theft,” another in immorality,° and he seems once to 
have caught one of his co-religionists, no doubt a Jew 
of the dispersion, a man who used to speak with scorn 
of heathen idols, enriching himself through these idols 
by acting as receiver of goods stolen from a temple.’ 


1 Acts xxii. 3. 2Gal. i. 14, cf. Acts xxii. 3. 

3 Rom. ii. 19 f., ddnyov truprGy, POs TOv ev oKdTEL, TadevTIV appdver, 
dvddoKadov vyntiov. 

4Rom. vii. 15 ff. 5 Rom. ii. 21. 

6 Rom. ii. 22 (a). 

“So I try to explain this obscure passage (Rom. ii. 220). In the 
remarkable sentence ‘ thou that abhorrest idols, dost thou rob temples ?’ 
there is probably contained a definite recollection of Paul. 


PAUL THE JEW 95 


Such observations certainly, even in his Jewish period, 
led Paul, the Pharisee, deep into the understanding of 
that great thought of the prophet of old,! ‘the circum- 
cision of the heart,’* in contrast to the merely outward 
circumcision in which many a Jew openly gioried,® while 
others, no doubt in fear of heathen ridicule, endeavoured 
to hide the Jewish sign when in the bath or stadium.* 

The knowledge that beside the ‘secret,’® that is the 
genuine Jews, there were also many merely ‘ outward ’® 
ordinary Jews, who were judged to be sinners by the 
pious heathen,” and the deeply humiliating experiences 
of his own often vain strivings after ‘righteousness’ by 
personal achievement,* may well have caused thoughts 
from time to time to flash out in the glowing soul of 
Paul the Pharisee of the extraordinary and pre-eminent 
achievements of religious sacrifice. At times the ideal 
of the Maccabzean martyrs was alluring to him, it ap- 
peared the highest degree of piety to ‘give his body to 
be burned’® for God’s sake. He would have been 


1Deut. x. 16; xxx. 6; Jer. iv. 4. 

2 Rom. ii. 29, wepuropui) Kapdias. 

3 Rom. ii. 28, as Cor vil to 

> Rom. ii. 29, 6 év 7G Kputro “Tovdatos. 

6 Rom. ii. 28, 6 év 7d davepd "lovdaios. 

7 Rom. ii. 26 ff. 8 Rom. vii. 14 ff. 

91 Cor, xiii. 3, éav rapadd 75 cbpd pov iva kavOyooua. In spite of 
the thorough defence of the various reading xavxyjooua by Adolf 
Harnack (Sitzungsberichte der Kgl. Preuss. Akademie der Wissen- 
schaften, 1911, p. 139 ff.) I regard xavOjooua (or xavOjowma, the sub- 
junctive of the future, also is found in the papyri) as original. I 
cannot agree that martyrdom by fire had not occurred within Paul’s 
horizon (p. 181 below). Even more important than the significant 
passage Dan. iii 28 is 2 Macc. which in vii. 3 ff. exactly describes 
a martyrdom by fire and especially 4 Macc., in Paul’s time quite a 
modern book, which simply revels in martyrdom by fire and its details 
Vida veer. -srvil. 4.12 viii. 13> ix; 17,19: ff. ; x. 145) xi 18 ff; 
Sie U-20) xiii, 5,9: xiv. 9 £:;. xv,,14 f., 20/92: xvii. L: | xviii. 20, 
Cf. on this point my notes in Kautzsch’s Apokryphen wnd Pseudepi- 
graphen, ii, p. 149-177). That victory in martyrdom by fire was 


96 PAUL 


capable of doing so, too, just as in after days as a 
Christian he would gladly have sacrificed himself for 
his people.’ 


Even when a Christian Paul preserved the most 
genuine features of his Jewish nature. ‘Therefore the 
theme ‘Paul the Jew’ is not to be interpreted as if 
Paul had been a Jew up to his conversion, but after 
that was a Jew no longer. Paul remained a Jew while 
also a Christian in spite of his passionate controversy 
against the law. This is not intended in a merely 
ethnological sense (naturally he did not divest himseli 
of his race when he was baptised), but also in a relig- 
ious sense and as a sentiment. Far from mechanically 
separating the Jew and Christian in Paul we may con- 
fidently call him the greatest Jewish Christian of primi- 
tive times. He had inherited his worship of God ‘from 
his fathers.’ We may surely assume that in his own 
family there had been a similar continuity of earnest 
piety generation after generation, as that which he 
praises in Timothy’s mother Eunice, and his grand- 
mother Lois: their ‘unfeigned faith’ had been inherited 
by their son and grandson.* And it may especially be 
taken for granted that a thorough appreciation of the 
outer expression of religion ran in his blood as an in- 
heritance from his fathers. Only a religious man whose 
feelings were rooted in religious observances could in 
later times so passionately feel the problem of the law, 


regarded as the highest evidence of faith, is shown by Heb. xi. 34 (ef. 
4 Mace. xvi. 21 ff; xviii. 12-14). But even Paul’s own time had 
known public burnings of Jews in the Jewish massacres at Alexandria 
under Caligula (Schiirer, i., 8rd Hd., p. 498, English Ed., Div. I., vol. 
ii., p. 93 f.). And these Alexandrian sacrifices by fire were martyrs in 
the true sense, because their cause was refusal of emperor-worship. 
The variant from xavOyocowar may have arisen through the reflexion 
that Paul’s own martyrdom was not a martyrdom by fire. 
1 Rom. ix, 3. ares haere 3h 32 Tim. i. 5. 


PAUL THE JEW 97 


which was essentially a problem of religious observances, 
and fight it through as he did. 

Paul never departed from the national and religious 
communion of his people ;! he retained with pride the 
name ‘Hebrew’’ and the even more significant names 
‘Tsraelite’* and ‘seed of Abraham,’‘ just as he also 
certainly reckoned himself one of the ‘Israel of God.’ ® 
He speaks of Jews in the wilderness as the ‘ Fathers’ ® 
and ‘forefathers,’’ and to boast of ‘father’ Abraham ° 
and ‘father’ Isaac® comes natural to him. He calls 
even the unbelieving Jews ‘brethren, kinsmen accord- 
ing to the flesh’ and for them he would willingly him- 
self have received the curse if thereby he could have 
saved them.” He boasts, too, his descent from the tribe 
of Benjamin," which he shared with King Saul,” and 
his circumcision on the eighth day.” And if anyone 
had denied that he was a Jew, the scars left by his 
frequent bloody scourgings at the hands of the syna- 
gogue Jurisdiction ’* would have been painful proof of 
his membership. His thinking is Jewish. So also in 
neutral things; for example he reckons the dates of 
journeys by the Jewish calendar of feasts.° Though 
standing himself above the letter of the law, he yet as 
an apostle continued to observe the hallowed customs 


1 With what follows cf. also Gustav Hoennicke, Paulus als Patriot, 
Deutsch-EHvangelisch, 6 (1915), p. 61 ff, and the chapter ‘The Patriot’ 
by R. H. Strachan, The Individuality of St. Paul, 2nd Hd., London, 
undated (but Preface dated 1916). Both studies are amongst the 
few good fruits of theological war inspiration. 

2Phil. iii. 5; 2 Cor. xi. 22, cf. above, pp. 90 n. 5, 91. 


SOusOre si. 245. 0m, xi. 1. 4 Tbid. 

5 Gal. vi. 16. RipWorkx. 1. 7 Rom. iv. 1. 
8 Rom. iv. 16. 9 Rom. ix. 10. 10 Rom. ix. 3. 
Phil. iii. 5; Rom. xi. 1. 12 Acts xiii. 21. 


13 Phil. iii, 5, weprropyn SKranpepos. 
142 Cor. xi. 24, cf. above, p. 61 ff. 
15] Cor. xvi. 8; Acts xxvii. 9. 


7 


98 PAUL 


of his people: the references that point to this in Acts? 
are not later touches by some one with a Jewish bias, 
but indications of the actual carrying out by Paul of the 
principle ORD Eee: by himself, his becoming ‘to the 
Jews a Jew.’ 

Also the feeling of contrast which the Jews 
experienced towards ‘sinners of the Gentiles’* was 
not unknown to him, and just as he, with a sense of 
his Hellenism, occasionally emphasises the separation of 
‘Greek’ and ‘Barbarian,’* so feeling as a Jew he 
frequently employs the old Jewish contemptuous 
expression ‘heathen’® (‘Gentile’) for the non-Jews. 
The Roman applied: the same word also no doubt 
contemptuously to the provincials. Here too belongs 
that metaphor which makes the Jews the cultivated 
olive-tree and the Gentiles the wild olive.® 

How greatly Paul loved the people of his own race 
is shown in the fiery confessions of Romans.’ There it 
is no theoretical question that torments him, but grief 
over his people who have turned away from Jesus the 
Messiah : the question, has God perhaps after all cast 
aside his people, presses upon his mind.* And though 
Paul was never able to discover an intellectual solution 
of that problem, nevertheless in the enthusiasm of his 
faith and through the love he bore to his people he was 
in the end able to put the painful question aside. 

The observation that Paul after his conversion 
exhibits none of the renegade’s hatred undoubtedly 
points to a sympathetic trait in his general portrait. 

1 Acts xvi. 3; xviii. 18; xxi. 26. 

71 Cor. ix. 20, cat éyevouny Trois “Iovdatous ds “Lovdaios. 

3 Gal. ui. 15. 4 Col. iii. 11; Rom. i. 14. 

°For €6vy = provincials, cf. for example A. von Domaszewski in 
the Strena Helbigiana, Lipsiae, 1899, p. 53; and David Magie, De 
Lomanorum juris publict sacrique vocabulis ..., Lipsiae, 1905, 


p. 58. 
6 Rom. xi. 17 ff. 7 Rom. ix.-xXi. 8 Rom. xi. 1. 


PAUL THE JEW 99 


The harsh expressions against the Law, which he 
occasionally uses, are outweighed by other passages, in 
which he strives to do justice to the Law. Indeed he 
not infrequently continued to use the Law as authority 
quite in the manner of his fathers.! 


Here we come to the most characteristic trait of 
Paul, the Jew. ‘To the end Paul remained a pious Bible- 
Jew, a Septuagint Jew. What separated him on this 
question from other Jews of the Dispersion was the 
recognition, that in Christ the Law had lost its binding 
force and the promises had received their fulfilment. 
But the general religious and ethical contents of the 
Septuagint are for him the self-evident presupposition 
even of his Christian piety. 

Paul, the Christian, never withdrew from the divine 
world of the Hellenistic Old Testament. To under- 
stand the whole Paul from the point of view of the 
history of religion one must know the spirit of the 
Septuagint. The historical presupposition of Paul’s 
religious life is not the Hebrew Old Testament, and 
not necessarily what we should call ‘Old Testament 
Theology, but the faith contained in the Greek Old 
Testament. The task of reconstructing the Jewish 
background of Paul’s Christianity on the basis of the 
Septuagint conceived as a complete and uniform Bible 
has scarcely been recognised by scholars, let alone 
solved. It resolves itself into a number of separate 
problems of which only a few can be mentioned: the 
certainties about God in the Septuagint ; the Spirit and 
Christ in the Septuagint ; faith and righteousness in the 
‘Septuagint and many others. 

On some points of course the results of such separate 
investigations will be closely similar to the results of 
Old Testament theology as worked out on the basis of 


Cf. e.g., 1 Cor. ix. 9; Gal. iii, 13, ete. 


100 PAUL 


the Hebrew Bible, but on many points this will not be 
so. Old Testament theology regards the Old Testa- 
ment as the historical document of a complex of facts 
in the history of religion developing gradually over a 
stretch of many centuries in a number of separate 
phases. The student of the Septuagint, on the other 
hand, regards the Greek Old Testament essentially as 
Paul regarded it, and as a pious layman to-day regards 
the Old Testament—as something relatively uniform. 
The Greek translation has indeed almost completely 
removed the many lines by means of which in -the 
original Hebrew text the stages of gradual stratification 
and development are noticed by the historical student. 
Bible statements from Genesis, from the Prophets and 
from quite late Psalms, documents of several hundred 
years apart, which perhaps in the original text cannot 
be combined at all, are in the Septuagint Bible united 
without difficulty, because the reader whose religious 
life is nourished on the Septuagint in his effortless 
simplicity hears the same unalterable Spirit speaking 
the same revelation in every roll of his Holy Scrip- 
tures.’ 

The great place held by Septuagint piety in the 
religious psyche of Paul is at once evident in the vast 
number of quotations from the Greek Bible which we 
find in his letters. It is not improbable that Paul made 
use of a text of the Septuagint which had already 
undergone a Jewish revision.’ 

Paul’s connection with the Septuagint shows itself 
even more strikingly in his whole religious and ethical 
vocabulary. But it becomes clearest to us when pos- 


1Compare my work mentioned, p. 87 note 1. 

2 Further on this question in my work, Die Septuaginta-Papyri 
und andere alichristliche Texte der Heidelberger Papyrus-Sammiung, 
Heidelberg, 1905, p. 69 f. What Alfred Rahlfs has to say on the 
matter, Z.N.T.W., 20 (1921), p. 182 ff., has not altered my opinion. 


PAUL THE JEW 101 


sessing an accurate knowledge of Paul’s letters we read 
the Septuagint itself, not merely a few lines quoted by 
Paul, but the whole book, as the Hellenistic Bible. 
Unfortunately there is still a great lack amongst us of 
methodical reading of the Septuagint and even of what 
should come before that, exegesis of the Septuagint. 
But for the student of Paul there is scarcely anything 
more interesting and instructive.! 


The exegesis also, which Paul bestows upon the 
Greek Bible, clearly indicates to us Paul, the Jew. It 
is the exegesis of a completely authoritative document. 
Although Paul indeed regarded one part of this docu- 
ment, the Law, as abolished in Christ, yet, as already 
mentioned, he occasionally quotes passages from the 
Law with the significant words ‘it is written.’ In the 
Hellenistic world at that time ‘it is written’ was the 
formula used when people referred to the terms of an 
unalterable agreement.” That: is exactly how Paul uses 
it. What is written cannot be disputed; therefore 
every quotation trom Scripture is a proof from Scripture. 
God Himself speaks in Scripture, Scripture was even 
itself personified,® and the principle is laid down :‘ 


not to go beyond the things that are written. 


With such an attitude to the letter of the Bible Paul, 
as an exegete, appears slavishly bound from the outset. 


‘In preparation of my first piece of work on the formula ‘in 
Christ Jesus’ I read rapidly through the whole Septuagint in order to 
establish the use in construction of the preposition ‘ é&.’ (The English 
Concordance [Hatch and Redpath] fortunately had not then reached €). 
I am indebted to this reading for great and continuous stimulus. For 
some years now there have been lectures and classes on the exegesis of 
the Septuagint held in the Theological Faculty at Berlin. 

* For proofs of this juridical yéyparra, see Bibelstudien, p. 109 f. 
[English, Bible Studies, p. 112 f.]; Neue Bibelstudien, p. 77 f. [English, 
Bible Studies, p. 249 f.]. 

3 Hg. Gal. iii. 8, 22. *1 Cor. iv. 6, wi imep & yéyparran. 


102 PAUL 


But we know that means had long ago been discovered, _ 
in spite of the tyranny of the letter, to get beyond the 
letter. This means, which Paul is fond of using, is 
allegorical exegesis. It was not invented by Jews: 
they certainly took it over from Hellenism, which in- 
terpreted the poets allegorically, in order to get rid of 
their religious coarseness for those who through culture 
had become prudish. 

The Jews, however, were very glad to borrow it, 
because they needed it. It would be unjust to the 
allegorical exegesis of Judaism and early Christianity 
to regard it as the abortion of a wholly irrational 
theosophical fanaticism. The mere observation that 
so great a mind as Philo Judzus made extensive use 
of it, should make us more cautious. As a matter of 
fact, in an age when inspiration was construed on a legal 
basis with mechanical lteralism, allegorical exegesis 
was the only means open to prophetic and creative 
minds of escaping the grip of the letter ;* and with 
Philo, as also with Paul, allegorical exegesis, however 
paradoxical this may sound, was more a sign of freedom 
than of bondage, though it led both of them to great 
violence of interpretation. 

Instances of such violence are, for example in Paul’s 
letter to the Galatians,’ the interpretation of the word 
‘the seed’* as singular, although the idea is actually 
intended to have a plural sense, and elsewhere is inter- 
preted by Paul as plural.* Or the subtle explanation 
of the story of the fall favourably to the man.’ Or the 
application of the words about the ox, which was not 
to be muzzled while threshing,® to the Apostles.’ Paul, 


1G. Klein also regards allegorical exegesis similarly (Der dlteste 
christliche Katechismus und die jtidische Propaganda-Literatur, Berlin, 


1909, p. 42 £). 
2 Gal. iii, 16. 3 Gen. xiii. 15. 
4 Rom. iv. 18; ix. 8. 51 Tim. ii. 18 £. 


6 Deut. xxv. 4. 11 Cor. ix. 9.) cl 1 him sae 


PAUL THE JEW 1038 


moreover, when in the course of this interpretation he 
suggests that God does not care about oxen, speaks in 
these strangely unpractical and feeble words as a man 
from the city, who does not regard animals in a simple 
way because he has never lived with them; and we 
notice how far he is from the splendid and powerful 
realism of the faith of Jesus, who from childhood 
onward had grown up in constant contact with animals 
and plants. Jesus cannot think that a sparrow falls 
to the ground without God’s will,’ and sees the flowers 
of the Galilean spring clothed by God Himself in their 
garments of more than royal splendour.’ 

On the other hand, Paul, the allegorical exegete, does 
succeed by means of this method in producing splendid . 
religious ideas: the parallel between Sarah and Hagar 
and the two Covenants ;* the identification of the rock 
that gave water in the wilderness with the Spiritual 
Christ.* These, viewed in their ancient setting, are re- 
velations of a great mind, and they cannot be diminished 
by modern objections. Here the Jewish allegorical 
method, which elsewhere lends crutches to the small 
masters of theology, gives the religious genius wings 
to rise up like the eagle. 

In several other details the use of Scripture by 
Paul, the Jew, is dependent on his rabbinic tradition, 
especially on the peculiarities of the edifying legend, 
the so-called, Haggada. | From this source comes the 
theory mentioned in Galatians,’ and noticed in other 
places,® that the Law was not given directly by God 
Himself but by the angels; from this source comes the 
number 430, also in Galatians,’ and that popularly 


1 Matt. x. 29; Lk. xii. 6, ef. Matt. vi. 26; Lk. xii. 24. 
2 Matt. vi. 28 f.; Lk. xii. 27. 

* Gal. iv. 23 f. 41 Cor. x. 4. 

° Gal. iii. 19 (cf. also Col. ii. 16 combined with ii. 18). 
6 Acts vii. 538; Heb. ii. 2. 7 Gal, tii. 17. 


104 PAUL 


familiar touch! that the rock that gave water to the 
fathers had followed them in their journeyings in the 
wilderness. 


The influence of his Jewish teachers is also to be 
seen in what is generally called Paul’s dialectic, and 
particularly the influence of the methods of teaching 
and proof used in oral discussions in the house of 
instruction. Paul’s letters also as we must bear in 
mind were mostly dictated orally: and the methods of 
oral proof are quite fitting. Apart from the proof of 
all proofs the proof from Scripture, the proof from 
analogy is a favourite; /for example, analogies from 
Nature are used to ilustrate the relationship between 
the earthly and the heavenly body ;” similarly analogies 
from agricultural and military life illustrate the right 
of Apostles to support.* Analogies from legal practice 
are especial favourites, for that was of great interest 
to Paul, the citizen of a great city:* another person 
cannot add a clause to a testament :° the heir while a 
minor is under guardians and stewards for as long as 
the father has appointed. We find further the argu- 
ment from less to greater’ (‘simple and complex,’ the 
Rabbis called it), or also the argument from the greater 
to the less.° The magnificent parallel drawn between 
Adam and Christ in 1 Corinthians and Romans is also 
typically Rabbinic.® 

On the whole, however, in my opinion, too much has 
been made of Paul’s use of Rabbinic dialectic as of his 
dialectic in general. Logical proof in the strict sense 
of the word, and progress in a direct line of argument, 


11 Cor. x. 4. 21 Cor. xv. 30 ff. $1 Cor, ix 
*Cf. above, p. 71 note 4. 5 Gal. iii. 15. 
Bised ay, 710. 7H.g. Rom, xi. 12, 24, 


§ Hg. 1 Cor. vi. 1 ff. ; Rom. xi. 21. 
Pi Core xy, BOL ee Rom. verkoen: 


PAUL THE JEW 105 


are not Paul’s strong points. Exegetes have treated 
him far too exactingly in this connection, and their 
many attempts to ‘restore the true order of thought’ in 
Paul’s letters merely result in turning the free creations 
of genius into something repulsively stiff and wooden. 
Hoping to arrive with him at the end of a straight 
road, you often find yourself brought back to the 
starting-point of a circle. In controversy, for instance, 
Paul is of much too impulsive a nature to be a great 
dialectician. Rather than refute his opponents at 
length, he disposes of them with a flash of his irony or 
with an angry look, and in dealing with religious 
problems he is more successful generally on the in- 
tuitive and contemplative side than on the purely 
speculative. 


How far this intuitive-contemplative endowment of 
Paul is a Jewish trait, I do not venture to say. In the 
sphere of mysticism there are not a few analogies, 
especially amongst’ the classical mystics of the middle 
ages. In any case the idea of contemplation seems 
better to characterise the distinctive feature of Paul’s 
religious contribution (as also that of the Evangelist 
John) than the idea of theological speculation. 

In speaking of Pauline contemplation I do not 
mean an action of the man’ who, following a method 
for the training of the soul which he has learnt, climbs 
up the ladder to heaven rung by rung until he reaches 
union with the Deity. Pauline contemplation is a 
reaction to a divine visitation; the strings within 


‘Compare with this also Ernst Troeltsch, Die Soziallehren der 
christlichen Kirchen und Gruppen, Tibingen, 1912, p. 29. The lines 
that stand there in quotation marks are taken from my sketch in the 
Jahrbuch des Freien Deutschen Hochstifts (Frankfurt A/M), 1905, 
p. 86. 

See above, p. 79 f. and Chapter VI. 


106 PAUL 


vibrate at the touch of God’s fingers; the trembling 
soul reacts to revelation, whither it comes in the form 
of deep sorrow or in the ecstatic rejoicing of the 
Psalmist. ‘Pass onward ye believing thoughts to the 
broad field of Eternity !’» Contemplation consists both 
in the believer steeping himself, being submerged, in 
the revealed ‘deep things of God,’' and in a struggle 
with practical problems which are not interesting from 
the theological scientific point of view but are felt as 
the torturing problems of religion. What can I say 
further to describe it? In one of the greatest of his 
confessions Paul himself described with inimitable 
expertness the naturé of this contemplative thought 
process, the outcome of an endowment of the Spirit, of 
inspiration.” 

But unto us God revealed them 

Through the Spirit. 


For the Spirit searcheth all things, 
Yea the deep things of God. 


The results of contemplation cannot be put into 
hard and rigid sentences, they are something tender, 
living, working inwardly like a feryent. They do not 
fly hke a whizzing arrow straight to their mark but they 
circle* around their booty in noiseless flight like an 
eagle. There is often also in contemplation something 
that causes the mind to stop and to brood; it guides 
those who enter its school not so much into well con- 
sidered progress in thought, as into a deepening of 


11 Cor. ii. 10, ra Ban rod Geod. 

2Tbid., nyiv d€ dmexdd\upev 6 Oeds Sid Tov mvevparos. 7d yap 
Tvevpa wévTa épavva, kal Ta BAOn Tod Oeot. The whole passage, 1 Cor. 
li. 6-16, must be the starting-point for an understanding of Paul on the 
great scale. Richard Reitzenstein has grasped this better than many 
in theological circles. 

§ Hans Leisegang, in Der Apostel Paulus als Denker, p. 9, on this 
account speaks of ‘a circle of thought in the literal sense of the 
word.’ On other points also this delicate study has much of value. 


PAUL THE JEW 107 


thought. It cannot be formed into a unified system 
because it is the tumultuous movement of a deeply 
stirred soul. 

The well-known discussion in Romans of God’s ways 
with Israel is typical of this contemplative tumult of 
the agitated soul.1 It is here a problem of thought 
indeed, but much more an agonising religious un- 
certainty that disturbs Paul, the Jew. No theoretical 
solution is discovered ;” in spite of several attempts to 
free himself, every time Paul becomes again entangled 
in the net of the problem, and the answers he gives 
are not solutions by means of speculative thought but 
rendings of the net by the irresistible momentum of his 
religious intuition. 

The results of Paul’s contemplation flow in the clearest 
stream in the letter to the Colossians and the nearly 
akin letter to the Laodiceans (Ephesians so-called). 
There were no special problems of church lite which 
had to be discussed in these two letters; and so Paul 
could here express himself more in solemn hymn-like 
utterances, which even in their style strike one with 
their tone of priestly earnestness. Here comtemplation 
is reinforced by the inspiration of united worship and 
streams forth in foaming rhythms, in psalmody—and 
may I say it, in dynamically pre-existent cantatas ! ° 

It must, however, again be emphasised that it is not 
certain whether in the strongly contemplative trait of 
Paul’s character we are in touch with the specifically 
Jewish side of his nature. It might be said that his 
contemplation is Jewish in its want of system and in its 
lack of balance on the theoretical side, that its con- 
structive aids, and especially the proofs from Scripture 


1 Rom, ix-xi. 2 Cf. above, p. 98. 

3J cannot claim deep knowledge of Bach, but I can claim that I 
have received much from him. When I open the chapel door of 
the Epistle to the Colossians it is to me as if Johann Sebastian him- 
self sat at the organ, 


108 PAUL 


are Jewish. Or are we to call it all ‘Semitic,’ are we 
to call it simply ‘Oriental’? Not much depends on a 
name.' Perhaps what is essential in this case cannot 
be traced back further at all, but must be regarded as 
a personal endowment of Paul which attained its full 
development alter Damascus. 

Be that as it may, Paul, the Jew, stands before us 
clearly, with all the strength that Judaism carried with 
it, and also with a part of the limitations that surrounded 
Judaism. 

But the characteristic features of Paul, the Jew, 
come out even more clearly when we set him beside the 
Jew who had world-wide fame in the Hellenistic age as 
the Jew,” who in fact became a sort of Father of the 
Church, Philo of Alexandria. 

These two, Philo the Jew and Paul the Jew, were 
contemporaries. Both came out of the Dispersion, 
were men of great cities and had a strongly cosmo- 
politan character. Both lived and moved in the 
Septuagint. Both were capable of ecstatic-mystical 
experiences and had many points of contact in 
details. 

And yet there is a very sharp contrast between 
them, a contrast that reminds one of the antithesis 
between Seneca*® and Paul, and in some of its main 
features is repeated in the contrast between Erasmus 
and Luther. 

Philo was a writer, Paul a speaker (even his letters 


1 Nor does it depend much on in what chapter of a book on Paul 
we consider this peculiarity of the Apostle. It might be dealt with 
just as well in Chapter III. or Chapter VI. 

? Charles Johnston—The Constructive Quarterly, 1 (1913), p. 810: 
Paul and Philo—writes from another point of view. He discusses the 
possible influence of Philo and Paul. The comparison, on a basis of 
the History of Religion, by Gustay Hoennicke of Paul and Josephus, 
is very interesting (Neue Kirchliche Zeitschrift, 20 (1909), p. 650 ff.). 

3 See above, p. 74. 


PAUL THE JEW 109 


were spoken). The name of Philo probably reached 
Paul, but Philo can scarcely have heard of Paul. Philo 
was a professional author; Paul was not. Philo left 
behind him literary works, Paul unliterary letters. 
Philo was an Atticist, was careful about the dual, the 
optative, and the use of hiatus. Paul wrote as he 
spoke and what he spoke was the living Greek of the 
Hellenistic world. Philo was a philosopher. Paul 
the fool, poured out the vials of his irony upon the 
wisdom of the world. 

Philo belongs to the upper-class, Paul to the middle 
and lower classes; Philo represents high literary 
culture, Paul the strength that wells up from the 
people. Philo is a Pharos, Paul a volcano. Philo isa 
student and theologian, Paul a prophet and _ herald. 
Philo worked at his desk for the great literary public, 
Paul hurried from the workshop to the market-place 
and the synagogue, to see his hearers face to face. 
The nephew of Philo, Tiberius Julius Alexander, was 
Procurator of Palestine and Preefect of Egypt and his 
name is not only immortalised by Josephus, Tacitus and 
Suetonius, but he has also a monument in stone on the 
wall of the propylon of a temple in the Great Oasis— 
one of the most famous inscriptions of the early imperial 
period.! Paul’s nephew, trembling for the safety of his 
uncle, as he was questioned by Roman officers in 
Jerusalem,’ appeared an unknown man out of the 
ereat crowd of the nameless and then at once dis- 
appeared. Philo travelled as an ambassador to Rome 
and was received by the emperor, Paul only had con- 
nections. with the imperial slaves* and was transported 
to Rome as a prisoner. 

The whole mass of contrasts between the man of 


1Dittenberger, Orientis Graect Inscriptiones Selectae, No. 669. 
Copy in Licht vom Osten, 4th Hd., p. 305. 
? Acts xxiii. 16 ff. § Phil. iy. 22. 


110 PAUL 


Alexandria and the man of Tarsus may be summed up 
thus: Philo is a Platonist, Paul will be what he will be 
in Another; Philo, the Jew, stands at the end of ancient 
civilisation, Paul, the Jew, stands at the beginning of 
the new world-religion. 


It is true that before Paul, the Jew, takes his stand 
upon the threshold of a new era, we see him as the 
fanatical defender of the Pharisaic tradition, his face 
turned backwards to the past. Paul, the Jew, first 
comes upon the stage of history as the persecutor of the 
new body of Christians. In the passionate zeal therein 
displayed he is also a genuine Jew. ‘The picture which 
Acts' draws of the persecutor is no doubt in the main 
correct; in the chief features it is confirmed by the 
painful, self-tormenting confessions of Paul’s letters.’ 
And historically the explanation of this position of Paul 
in his young days is simple enough. The conflict in 
which Jesus fell a victim was a conflict with the leading 
party, the Pharisees. Paul the persecutor is Paul the 
Pharisee, who continued the war waged by his party 
against Jesus by himself waging war against the group 
of followers who reverenced the crucified.’ 

VActs vi. 9; vil. 68; vit fe) rx) dis xxi foe eve 

*Galli, 13 £5233 1' Cor xveOee Pn sie oo mei 


° (German, ‘ Kultgemeinde des Gekreuzigten.’ I know of no exact 
equivalent to this in English W.. E. W.]. 


PAUL THE CHRISTIAN 


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CHAPTER V 
PAUL THE CHRISTIAN 


‘ 
re NEW CULT. PRINCIPAL FACTS ABOUT THE NATURE, DISTINGUISH- 
ING MARKS, AND ORIGIN OF THE CULT. THE PRIMITIVE APOSTOLIC 


ae > 
: CULT OF JESUS (KyRioscuLT). ‘THE CONVERSION OF PAUL. 


Tue death of Jesus on the cross had as its immediate 
result the dispersion of His little band of followers out 
of Galilee and Jerusalem. In the great religious conflict 
with the powerful Pharisees Jesus seemed to have been 
finally defeated, although when foretelling his martyr- 
dom?! in prophetic words of foreboding He had also 
spoken of His speedy return after the martyrdom.” 
But very soon after the terrible experience of the 
execution of Jesus, we find these fearful and despairing 
- followers again gathered together in the holy city. And 
though before they had scarcely been united into an 
organised church, now they appear bound together as a 
religious cult holding fellowship by means of breaking 
bread and prayers, while they look forward with longing 
hope to the great final revelation of the Messiah. The 
“new cult had come into existence. 


1The most important passages are Lk. xiii. 31 ff ; Matt. ix. 15 ; 
Lk. xii. 50; Matt. xxvi. 12; xxi. 37 ff; xx. 95-28, and with them the 
words at the Last Supper, Mk. xiv. 22 ff and its parallels ; to these 
must be added the original of the words Mk. vii. 31 and its parallels 
which have come down to us in a modified form due to their use in 

’ the Church. 
2Mk. viii. 831 and parallels (cf. note 1) and the words certainly 
understood by the disciples as applying to Jesus, Matt. x. 23; xvi. 28; 
xxiv. 384; xxvi. 64. 


-” 


(118) 8 


114 i PAUL 


What is a cult and how does a cult arise ?? 

Here it is first of all necessary to undertake an ex- 
planation of the meaning of the word. The word cult 
has both a narrower and a wider meaning, and in this 
fact lies the cause of many misunderstandings in pro- 
nouncements about cult-history and the methods of 
studying cult-history.2 The case is in fact similar to 
that of the use of the word mysticism.’ 


1T here wish in this new edition to draw attention, even if only in 
passing, to the fundamental questions which in my view have to be 
considered in dealing with Harly Christianity from the point of view 
of cult history. In the first edition these were only touched on from 
the methodological point of view in the preface, in contrast with Adolf 
von Harnack’s famous formula of the ‘double gospel.’ The cult-history 
method was itself carried out in the book. I then meant and still mean 
the term ‘ Religious History’ in the sub-title to be understood in the 
sense of ‘cult-history.’ That the cult-history method is a correct one 
has since been recognised by many; I mention (cf. Karl Ludwig 
Schmidt, Hschatologie und Mystik wm Urchristentum, Z.N.T.W., 21 
(1922), p. 280 f.) Ernest Troeltsch, Die Soziallehren der christlichen 
Kurchen und Gruppen, Tubingen, 1912, p.58; Wilhelm Bousset, Kyrios 
Christos, Gottingen, 19138, p. 107, 2nd Ed., 1921, p. 90; Reinhold 
Seeberg, Der Ursprung des Christusglaubens, Leipzig, 1914, p. 1%. 
Bousset in the above-mentioned book has carried out the cult idea on 
the great scale. 

2 The attitude taken by E. von Dobschiitz in his comprehensive 
review of my book Licht vom Osten, 4th Hd., in the Theologische 
Studien und Kritiken, 1923-24, p. 328 f., is exceptionally instructive. 
He opposes my technical word ‘ Christ-cult,’ because he equates ‘ cult’ 
with ‘cultus.’ Nevertheless he touches the real point when he says 
emphatically ‘Here clearly, as in the cases of mysticism, it depends 
on the use of language: If you equate veneration with cult, then it is 
not only possible, but obligatory, to speak of the primitive Christian 
Christ-cult, just as you can speak of primitive Christian mysticism, 
meaning thereby piety. But in scientific study one’s endeavour should 
be to attain as far as possible an unambiguous terminology.’ That is 
right, and for that reason I distinguish between cult and cultus. 
Further, I cannot agree with yon Dobschiitz who, on his part, uses 
cult in the (narrower) sense of cultus, when he denies the presence of 
the cult idea (in the narrower sense of the cultus idea) in early 
Christianity before the time of Clement of Rome. He has even gone 


® See below, Chapter VI. 


PAUL THE CHRISTIAN 115 


Most people at the mention of the word cult only 
think of the cultus, of the solemnities practised in 
worship by an organised religious body and of the 
formal expression of these solemnities. That is the 
narrower idea for which in German the word Kultus is 
used and should be retained. 


Cult in the wider meaning is what lies behind the 
cultus as its spiritual precondition: a practical depend- 
ence upon the deity, an attitude adopted towards the 
deity, a readiness for religious conduct, a readiness for 
religious dealing, religious dealing itself. The popular 
vocabulary* of many languages in its simplicity has 
grasped the fact that it is practical dependence upon 
the deity, that it is religious practice, which is the 
essential feature in the idea. And this has been 


so far as further to narrow down his already narrow idea of cult by 
making temple, priest, and sacrifice the outward signs of the cultus 
and designates the purpose of cultus as ‘exerting influence upon God.’ 
To me this type is identical with the ‘acting’ cultus (cf. below, p. 
117 ff.), but there is also a ‘reacting’ cultus. Such reacting cultus is 
to be seen in its powerful beginnings even in the earliest stages of the 
Christ-cult. Its traces in the New Testament are not even particularly 
infrequent. Tor further discussion of the subject, what von Dobschttz 
says on the cult question in Norsk teologisk Tidsskrift, 1922, must on 
no account be overlooked. Hegel long ago established a narrower and 
a wider conception of ‘cultus,’ cf. G. W. I’. Hegel, Begriff der Religion, 
Vorlesungen wiber Philosophie der Religion, Erster Teil, neu herausg. 
von Georg Lasson, Leipzig, 1925, p. 229. ‘Usually the expression 
‘Cultus’ is understood merely in the restricted meaning that brings 
to mind only the outward, public business [of religion] and does not 
much stress the inner business of the attitude of mind. But we shall 
understand cultus as the action embracing both the inner life and the 
outward phenomenon which above all endeavours to re-establish unity 
with the Absolute, and thereby is also essentially an inner conversion 
of the spirit and mind.’ 

1Cf. the at present indispensable article ‘Kultws’ by Friedrich 
Pfister in Pauly-Wissowa-Kroll Real-Enzyklopddie der klass, Aliertwms- 
Wissenschaft, ii. (Stuttgart, 1922), col. 2106-2192; also Hermann Her- 
ing in Hauck Real-Enzyklopddie, 3rd Kd., 7, p. 7. 


116 PAUL 


theoretically formulated by the experts.! What the 
languages call abodah (task, slave-service), Oepaveta 
(fostering care, hence worship), O0pnaoketia (concerning 
oneself, reverence), Nat peta (service), émupédera (watch- 
Jul care), Nectovpyta (liturgy, official service), tepovpyta 
(sacred rites), cultus (cult, fostering care), oficium (obliga- 
tion), servitium (service), Verehrung (reverence, worship), 
Gottesdienst (divine service), Dienst (service), service, wor- 
ship, and so forth, that has been recognised by the clear 
eye of a Schleiermacher, a Hegel, a Richard Rothe, and 
many another, as something practical.’ 

Cult is a practical dependence upon, a practical 
attitude towards, the deity on the part of a single 
individual or of a community. It is a modus colend 
Deum. It is not essential that it be a formal or collec- 
tive attitude towards the deity ; each stammering ejacu- 
latory prayer of a single person is cult. But cult 
becomes historically influential (and generally only can 
be grasped at all historically) where it has developed 
into the foundation of a church or community. When 
that has occurred we make an objective word from the 
subjective cult, and ‘a’ cult is seen as a particular 
historical phenomenon, we set it alongside others similar 
or dissimilar, and thus form the plural the cults, dis- 
tinguish the cults from one another and examine how 
they have arisen, how they have been developed, how 
the cults have each formed its own cultus. 


Anyone who regards primitive Christianity as a 
phenomenon in cult-history will thereby raise a protest 


1 Hven in cases where both usage and theory had perhaps only the 
narrower use of cultus in mind. 

2 These judgments (Schleiermacher uses the words ‘ Representa- 
tive dealing’; Rothe has a similar expression ; Hegel’s phrase is, ‘ that 
the Cultus is the highest act of the human mind’), are well known. 
Cf. K. R. Hagenbach, Hncyklopadie und Methodologie der Theologischen 
Wissenschaften, Leipzig, 1884, p. 444 f. 


PAUL THE CHRISTIAN 117 


against the still wide-spread doctrinaire view that in 
the Gospel (or in the two types of the ‘double’ Gospel) 
we are concerned chiefly with doctrines of God and of 
divine affairs, with theories which Jesus held, and 
theories about Jesus, with ‘ Weltanschauung,’ with a 
chapter out of the History of Ancient Thought. This 
protest does not overlook the fact that doctrine had an 
important place even in the earliest times, but it does 
not see in doctrine the main emphasis of the history. 
It is indeed not entirely false, but it is a distortion or be- 
fogging of the basal facts to deal with the inner history 
of the beginnings of our religion in the two chapters 
‘The Teaching of Jesus’ and ‘The Teaching of the 
Apostles. The sacred history of those early days 
actually had the source of its inner progress in the fact 
that the Messianic movement released through the 
Gospel of Jesus with its thoroughly practical attitude 
towards the approaching end of the world and the 
immediately expected Kingdom of God, in the end was 
historically consolidated into a cult, a cult of Jesus as 
Lord. To put it in other words; the Gospel became 
transformed into Christianity. 


The dividing line, which goes through the whole of 
the history of Religion by means of which we are able 
to differentiate in particular the separate types of 
contemplation’ and mysticism,’ of course also goes 
through the history of the cults. Cults are either 
‘acting’ cults or ‘re-acting’ cults. In both cases 
an action takes place. But in the first type the 
action is a spontaneous performance of the individual 
or of the community, intended to produce in response 
to it a performance on the part of the deity, effective 
through its own execution, effective as actio acta, 


1Cf. above, p. 105. 
2 Of, above p., 79 f., and below, Chapter Vii. 


118 PAUL 


as opus operatum. In the second, the reacting type, 
on the other hand, the action of the man is an 
action in response, a reaction. Here it is God Himself 
who is really the Lectourgos, the Theourgos in the highest 
sense; the individual or the community only says the 
amen. 

These two types of cult behind which the battle of 
shadowy giants, champions in the hoary strife between 
works and faith, between man’s will and God’s Grace, 
is fought out, were grasped with admirable clearness in 
the Augsburg Confession when it contrasted the cult of 
Law and the cult of the Gospel and perceived the cult 
of the Gospel to be a reaction. 

‘The evangelical cult and service is acceptance, an 
acceptance of good things from God. On the other 
hand, the legal cult is an offer: we offer and present 
our good things to God. But it is utterly impossible 
for us to offer anything to God unless we have 
already been reconciled and born again.’ But 
Paul, the protagonist, himself long ago distinguished 
the two types by inimitably sharp contrasting formule, 
in denying self-made cult” and commending the spirztual 
cult. He even reached the summit of cult intuition 
when he testified of a prayer that it was no human per- 
formance, but the gracious gift of the Spirit,* a prayer 
that Paul did not pray, but the Spirit. 


I can only here touch upon the alluring questions 
that open out of this, concerning the mingling of the 


1 Article III. (R. 126, I. T. Miller, p. 140), “ Ita cultus et Aarpeia 
evangelii est accipere bona a Deo; econtra cultus legis est bona nostra 
Deo offerre et exhibere. Nihil autem possumus Deo offerre nisi autea 
reconciliati et renati.’ Luther's influence is clear here (cf. the passages 
given in Praktische Theologie of K. Chr. Achelis, Freiburg i. B. and 
Leipzig, 1893, p. 217). 

2 Col. ii. 23, ebehoOpycxeia. 3 Rom. xii. 1, Aoyuxy Aarpeta. 

* Rom. viii. 26 f., cf. above, p. 79. 


PAUL THE CHRISTIAN 119 


two types of cult which are observable in the history of 
religion, when I say that almost all cults arose as re- 


actions ; afterwards when they became established they 
were accepted and practically worked as acting cults. ~ 


This was the case in Christianity, of course. The means 
by which it was sought to keep Christianity free from 
the danger of disfigurement from this source are 


amongst the greatest achievements of both Catholic and » 


Protestant theology. The Catholic method (coarser, 
plainer and more adapted to the mass of men) was the 
idea of the Church. The Protestant method (simpler 
and more profound) was the idea of Scripture and even 
more the idea of revelation, especially when revelation 
was not supposed to be contained within certain chrono- 
logical boundaries. Within this precinct, however it 
were named, it was possible to tend the holy flame 
ignited from God’s own volcano, and there over and 
over again as the lava became cool to re-melt it in the 
fiery flood of the original heat. But alas when Church 
and Scripture themselves became chilled to black stone! 
The whole history of Christian religious life can be 
understood from this point of view as the struggle of 
the reacting against the acting cult, and this struggle 
has its eternal exemplar in the conflict between Law 
and Faith which Paul lived through and wrestled 
through. 

What is the origin of a cult? This question ought 
not to be raised without some knowledge of the difficulty 
of the problem which lies behind the idea of origin. 
The difficulty lies, at least as regards the greater number 
of cults, in the extraordinary scantiness of the sources. 
And this being so, origin can be thought of in the sense 
of new creation as little as in the case of most other 
spiritual movements of history.’ Even where, in the 


1 Johannes Weiss, Das Problem der Entstehwng des Christentums, 
Archiv fiir Religionswissenschaft, 16 (1913), p. 426 f., says perfectly 


” am 


enn 


120 PAUL 


case of the artificially manufactured cult, like the cult 
of Antinous, we can observe the process fairly clearly, 
or where humbug-cults and business-cults scream their 
litanies, we have not to deal with a creatio ex nihilo: 
environment supplies both the disposition to form a 
cult and the customary usages of a cult, and these even 
in such cults are the pre-conditions. 

Thus the question of the origin of a particular cult 
cannot be isolated any more than a newly formed 
volcano can be examined as an isolated phenomenon 
of Nature. Cults originate from the upward thrust 
of energies already present. Anyone who is interested 
in the origin of a cult, and especially in one of the great 
cults of mankind, finds himself at once placed in the 
midst of great world-wide contacts with primeval facts 
of the soul’s life. In these his special problem is rooted 
and out of them no quick and easy answer is to be 
obtained. 

Almost always the investigator, as he feels back 
towards the limits of knowledge, will come to the twi- 
light or the darkness of a mystery. This is not only 
because his sources are insufficient, but above all it 
arises from the fact that the experienced mystery of a 


correctly: ‘ What is‘ origin” in the life of history altogether? The 
question must be only raised in order to gain the answer that an 
‘‘origin’’ in the sense of an entirely new creation never occurs— 
whether in History or in Nature—the “ new” is always in the broad 
sense a re-grouping of older elements according to a new principle, 
based upon stronger forces and unique experience of actuality. Every 
life-phenomenon, even the strongest, at its entrance into history lies 
under the necessity of at first using means of expressing itself already 
in existence ; only gradually and in very modest degree can it proceed 
to widen the conditions of tradition by new forms of expression. This 
law prevails nowhere more definitely than in the history of religion.’ 
Eduard Meyer, Ursprung und Geschichte der Mormonen. Mit Ex- 
kursen tiber die Anfange des Islams und des Christentums, Halle, 1912, 
is instructive from a methodological point of view with regard to this 
problem. 


PAUL THE CHRISTIAN 121 


miracle is usually at the foundation of a cult. Even. 
the artificially manufactured cults, the products of 
‘action’ alone, require a miraculous starting-point, 
though it be fictitious, and this is true even of those 
serving political and business ends. The reacting cults 
originate, according to their own testimony, practically 
always from miracle; according to the testimony of 
history, which speaks another language, out of the 
exceptionally moving religious experiences of excep- 
tional people. 


Seeing that in the investigation of the origins of a 
cult there is as a rule something that has to remain 
unexplained, it might be asked whether this vacuum 


does not tend to bring the cult itself into question. I, _ 


answer, No. For its vital influence the cult itself does 
not stand in need of a foundation mediated through 
history or indeed historically certain and complete. It 
is rather a dependence of the soul upon the presence of 
the Deity, and it has in itself the power continually to 
transform what we in the academic classroom call 
‘historical’ into present fact. The cult, therefore, 
hands down the tradition of its own beginnings in the 
form of a Myth, or a ‘Story of Salvation’ and pushes 
them back into the super-historical sphere, that is to 
say, it makes them eternally present. It recognises 
no vacuum. It has no historical reading to offer ; it 
opens the picture-book of legends. Genuine cult is 
never retrospective in the trivial sense of the chronicler 
of governmental documents and the registrar of archives. 
The memory of the cult even is not truly retrospective ; 
it also thinks of the past as present : a thousand years 


1 This thesis can be seen particularly richly illustrated in the case 
of those cults which according to statistics are the immense majority, 
the Filial-cults ; cf. my sketch Panagia Kapuli Die Christliche Welt, 
20 (1906), p. 878 ff. 


— 122 PAUL 


of the sacred past is for it a divinely hallowed to-day : 
for it the works of God are God working, the story 
of salvation is salvation now taking place. ; 

Many amongst us have become cult-blind through a 
modern cult, the cult of the historical. And accordingly 
they try with historical means either to give Christianity 
a sure foundation, or to explode it into the air as a 
troublesome ruin. But Christianity, if it is reacting 
Christ-cult, cannot be exploded, and requires no 
historical justification.” Its foundations are good. It 
stands to-day on the same basis upon which it stood 
originally, that is, it reveals the ever present God 
through the ever present Saviour. 

Thus it is true that for science and for Christian 
people the question of the origin of Christianity is an 
inexpressibly important and interesting matter, but for 
the cult itself it is not fundamental. As cult Christi- 
anity lives till to-day by the manifestly great and 
divinely blessed secret that was revealed to a Galilean 
fisherman. Not that fisherman, Simon Barjona, but his 
secret, nay rather his revelation,’ is the rock upon which 
the church is built.’ 


It was the Easter experiences of Simon Peter and 
the others*® which formed the origin of the Jesus- 


1 Matt. xvi. 17. 

“That is the transparent profundity of this passage in Matt. xvi. 
17 ff., which as it now stands has been much transformed by cult 
influences. 

’‘The most important sources are the monumental sentences, 
1 Cor. xv. 1 ff.; on which compare the penetrating investigations of 
Karl Holl, Der Kirchenbegriff des Paulus in seinem Verhdltinis zu dem 
der Urgemeinde, Sitzungsberichte der Preuss Ak. d. W., 1921, 
p. 920 ff., and of Adolf von Harnack, ibid., 1922, p. 62 ff But also 
in passages such as Lk. xxiv. 34 and 1 Tim. ii. 16, the old formula of 
confession, o6y, echoes, and in 1 Cor. ix. 1 and John xx. 18, cf. 25, 
the éwpaxa (éwpdxapev) is the primitive Haster formula of Confession, 
somewhat in the tone of the Cowrage, ye Mystar! To my mind it is 


PAUL THE CHRISTIAN 123 


cult, exceptionally moving religious experiences of 
exceptional people. The content of these experiences, 

which can never be fully analysed by historical means, 

is described in the same way by men and women: 

Jesus, they said, appeared to them as one raised up , 
by God from the dead in divine glory, with words of 
comfort and promise on his lips. 

These apostolic experiences are the psychological 
starting-point of the first Jesus-cult in Palestine and 
the genuine pre-condition for the rise of the Christian 
cult-community which now began to organise itself. 
They transformed the Prophet of the Kingdom of God 
into the object of apostolic piety, by setting the seal 
upon His Messianic self-revelation. They even went 
so far as to cast the reflection of divinity upon the 
figure of the Messiah—Christ elevated to Kyrtos, a 
miracle of grace made out of the tormenting problem of 
the cross, the Holy Scriptures of old time opened and 
confessors and prophets made to arise in a great resur- 
rection. With all this the new cult is the classical 
embodiment of a re-acting cult. 

For the understanding of primitive Christianity | 
from the standpoint of the history of religion it is of 
the utmost importance that we learn to recognise these | 
beginnings of the organised Christian Church, as the 
beginnings of a new cult, the Jesus-Christ-cult. | 


Jesus Himself established no new cult ; He foretold — 


the new age. But even during His earthly life His 
person became the centre for His faithful followers: 
His immense consciousness of His own person had 


certain that here we have very ancient primitive Apostolic cult-formule. 
Alfred Seeberg had a fine sense for such things. That Peter was the 
first to have the sight is unanimous tradition, but John xx, 3 ff. indi- 
cates that the competition between Ephesus and Rome (John xx. 4, 
érpexov dé of do du0d), between Hast and West, sought afterwards to 
weaken the uniqueness of this sight. 


124 PAUL 


exerted a selective and combining influence upon men. 
So historically the consciousness of Jesus that He was 
the Christ and the Jesus-cult of the Apostles work into 
one another: nevertheless the cult itself first came to 
birth as a result of the mystery of the Apostles’ Easter- 
experiences. And if we cannot penetrate the sacred 
morning twilight of this secret with light from the 
torch of exact scientific study and thus reduce the whole 
ancient mystery into modern obviousness, clear as day, 
we yet possess in the beginnings of the Jesus-cult an 
exemplar of the origin of a new cult probably unique in 
the whole history of ancient religions. And this, dis- 
regarding for the moment the real inner value of the 
apostolic piety, is what distinguishes this new cult from 
all others: the cult figure did not remain hidden in the 
cloudland of mythology, but was personally known? to 
most of the first members of the cult as a man of flesh 
and blood and was daily present to them in imperish- 
able and incomparable words handed down in a living 
stream of tradition ; the possession of these words was 
at the same time the protection against the degeneration 
of the elements of phantasy in the cult into the — 
phantastie. 


Looking at the origin of Christianity from below 
(the right point of view for the historian) there is 
exposed to our view in that position a great cosmo- 
politan mixture of races. 

The Gospel of Jesus connected the beginnings of 
our religion most closely with its mother-religion, 
Judaism. Then the apostolic Jesus-cult cast into the 
crucible, in the cult nature peculiar to it, an element 
essentially foreign to Judaism, at any rate on its official 


‘Right up to the fifties of the first century several hundred eye- 
witnesses were still alive (1 Cor. xv. 6), and blood relations of Jesus 
lived in Palestine down to an even later date. 


PAUL THE CHRISTIAN 125 


side,! and thereby in the very moment of its origin 
received the prophecy of its future break with Judaism 
and of its world-wide expansion. Through the cult- 
nature the other group of forces providentially present 
as part of the preparatio evangelica came into creative 
action: the ancient world of the ‘Gentiles.’ 

Long before that ‘ Hellenisation’ of Christianity 
which worked itself out in the uplands of later dogmatic 
thought, and created new forms of expression for the 
completed cult, the adoption of the apostolic religion 
had been accomplished in Palestine’? by means of 
ancient types of piety foreign to Judaism. The in- 
heritance transmitted by this adoption is not so much 
the cult itself, with its great content, the Lord, the 
Kyrios Jesus Christ, but the predisposition of soul, the 
cult feeling and sentiment, and with that a valuable 


10Qn this question I have had many a conversation both in 
Marburg and Berlin with my revered teacher Hermann Cohen, and 
have always received the impression that the stone of stumbling is 
even more the practice of the Christ-cult than the theory involved in 
it (the doctrine of the deity of Christ). Cohen in 1906 gave a 
passionate expression to this feeling of protest in an essay Gedanken 
iiber Jugendlektiive which is now printed in Hermann Cohen's 
Jidische Schriften, vol. ii., Berlin, 1924, p. 126 ff, Compare p. 128, 
‘The cult of the Hero is contrary to our deepest nature, and p. 129, 
‘Our religion opposes the deity of Christ.’ There was present already 
in the popular Judaism of Palestine a tendency of thought making 
for a cult of saints, as the cult of the graves of saints at the time of 
Jesus shows (cf. e.g. Matt. xxiii, 29; Luke xi. 47 £.). Moreover, in 
1909 I observed in Tiberias a cult of graves maintained by Jewish 
immigrants which had thoroughly ancient features, features which 
from the point of view of official J udaism were unjewish. Thus even 
Judaism (right up to to-day) has its sediment of primitive cult- 
religion. 

2 Bousset’s thesis that the Kyrioscult arose in Syria is not illuminat- 
ing to me. Compare against it also Ed. Meyer, Ursprung und 
Anfange des Christentums, 3rd Ed., Stuttgart and Berlin, 1923, p. 218. 
We ought to think of Palestine far more than we have hitherto as 
penetrated not only with specially ‘ Hellenistic ’ influences but also 
with a general tendency towards cosmopolitan cult ideas. 


126 PAUL 


treasure of forms by which ancient cults expressed 
themselves in language and ritual. 

We can describe this great synthesis in religious 
history by transforming an illustration which Paul used 
in conscious paradox.’ Primitive Christianity, already 
developed into a cult, was an olive-tree grown in the 
Holy Land into which the twig of an oleaster, wild yet 
abounding in strength, was grafted. The wild twig 
received by this means a part of the strength derived 
from the roots of the cultivated tree,? which on its side 
gained an accession of fresh life, stimulating new power 
of growth in its flow of sap. 


The outer signs of the primitive apostolic Jesus-cult 
are recognisable clearly enough in Acts. That book 
being a pious book for popular reading naturally does 
not speak of the earliest Church in dry tones, such as 
would be used, for example, in the statistical tables of 
our ecclesiastical bureaucracy, but with that depth of 
religious feeling which one associates with annual 
meetings of Missionary Societies. The one who told 
this first missionary story for the community of the 
saints kindled the enthusiasm both of himself and his 
readers, and the whole is naturally to be seen in a 
transfiguring glory of light. But the historical lines are 
unmistakable. ‘THhose who shared cult membership in 
the living Jesus Christ had already made for themselves 
the beginnings of an organisation carried on by brother- 
hood, not by organised communism ; possessed in Bap- 
tism and the Lord’s Supper two sacramental cult- 
institutions, which can be called the two primitive 


1 Rom. xi. 17 ff., cf. above, pp. 88, 98; for the consciousness of 
the paradox compare xi. 24 (against nature, tapi diow). On this 
question see Th. Daechsel, Kultwrgeschichtliche Siretfziige durch die 
Paulinischen Schriften, Dresden, A, 1910, p. 53 f. 

4\Rom, xial7. 


PAUL THE CHRISTIAN 127 


Christian Mysteries (using the words in the antique 
technical sense); and they had already early begun 
within their environment in Palestine and even as far 
as Phoenicia, Syria and Cyprus, to carry on propaganda 
for their cause, in order to gather together the com- 
munity that would be worthy for the Kingdom of God, 
so soon expected with the coming of the Lord. 

Historically the most remarkable document of this 
earliest Palestine Jesus-Christ-cult is an Aramaic 
hieroglyph, which later we find in a letter of Paul,’ 
but which arose as a primitive Aramaic word in 
the Aramaic-speaking primitive Church.? It was the 
ejaculatory prayer sent up longingly to Christ by the 
believers, perhaps at the end of the celebration of the 
Lord’s Supper :° 

Marana tha (Our Lord, Come!) 


Thus the early Church sighed to its Lord for His 
Advent in divine glory at the final Epiphany of the 
Kingdom of God. 


The self-sacrificing enthusiasm of the young com- 
munity soon led it into the same conflict with those in 
power which had brought Jesus to His death. The 
first martyr blood was shed, and at the death of Stephen, 
the first witness to give his blood, we find the zealous 
Pharisee, Saul, who was also called Paul, sharing the 
moral guilt. For the young man sprung from the sultry 


11 Cor. xvi. 22, Mapave 6a; cf. Revel. xx. 20, Zoxou Kvpte ‘Inood! 
Come, Lord Jesus ! 

2T hold this is the correct view, contrary to Bousset, Kyrios 
Christos, pp. 103 and 10%. 

3. with this the occurrence of the ejaculation in the earliest 
known prayer at the Lord’s Supper, see Didache, x. 6, «i Tis dyos Er, 
épxyeoOw. i TIS OUK ETL petavoeitw. Mapava da. dpryv. He whois holy, 
let him come! He who is not, let him repent! Marana tha. Amen ! 

4 Acts vii. 58; vii. 1. 


128 PAUL 


atmosphere of the Cilician plain must have been inspired 
with a fanatical hatred of the followers of Jesus of 
Nazareth, whose tremendous proclamation of woe 
against Pharisaic type of religion was not forgotten.? 
Step by step the propaganda of the Gospel was followed 
by a counter-propaganda of forcible suppression. It 
was organised by Saul Paul. In the service of the 
same disciplinary authority whose scourgings were later 
to lacerate his own back, he hastened—already an 
apostle in this—northwards to Damascus,’ to extinguish 
the fire of the new cult which was already glimmering 
there. 


It was upon this journey and close to the city of 
Damascus itself* that there came to Paul an experience 
which meant an entire transformation. It was his 
conversion. 

Concerning this event* which, though no heathen 
historian has noticed, was yet of world-wide importance, 
we have two sources: the Apostle’s own references, 
and three sketches in Acts,’ not in all their details quite 
in agreement with one another, which however—this is 
in the very nature of the case—must be in some way 
derived from accounts by Paul himself. 

Here again, as in the Christophany seen by Peter 


1 Matt. xxiii. and other places. 

4Gal. 1. 13 ff.; Acts ix. 22, 26. 

*This is derived by combination of Gal. i.13 with i.17 without 
reference to Acts. For the chronology, which can now, on the basis 
of the Gallio-insecription (see bélow Appendix I.), be reckoned earlier, 
cf, Adolf Harnack in the Sitzungsberichte der Kgl. Preuss. Ak. d. W., 
1912, p. 673 ff Here it is conjectured that the conversion took place 
in autumn of the year 31. 

* Julius Wellhausen, Kritische Analyse der Apostelgeschichte, 
Berlin, 1914, p. 17: ‘The Christophany at Damascus is in itself an 
unshakeable fact.’ 

° Acts ix. 1 ff. ; xxii. 3 ff.; xxvi. 10 ff. 


PAUL THE CHRISTIAN 129 


and by other members of the Easter community, we 
shall never reach the point of completely unravelling 
this experience psychologically, not even by the help of 
the numerous analogous accounts of conversion in the 
history of religion." But we can decide with a high 
degree of certainty how Paul himself regarded the 
occurrence. 

He described it once,? with the same words which 
he used of the Christophanies to the other Apostles,’ 
words, be it noted, which were already technical words 
for a divine epiphany in the Septuagint : 

He appeared also to me. 


He speaks of the living Christ, and hints that the ap- 
pearance of Christ to him was the last in a series. 
Another time‘ he says with even more of ancient 


vividness : 
I have seen Jesus our Lord, 


or he confesses, using an inner mystical expression :° 


I was apprehended of Christ Jesus. 


In a fourth case® he uses almost modern psychological 
terms of the experience, speaking of a revelation of 
God’s Son produced by God ‘within him’; in a fiith 
case’ he says in a more general way that the Christ- 
mystery has been made known to him by revelation. 
In the memory of that hour at Damascus there was no 
doubt always the impression of a tremendous shining 
light, like the light of the first day of God’s Creation 


1Qn this point compare the valuable hints of Rudolf Otto, ‘Das 
Auferstehungserlebnis als pnewmatische Erfahrung’ in his Aufsdize, 
das Numinose betreffend, Stuttgart-Gotha, 1923, p. 159-170. 

21 Cor. xv. 8, b60n Kapoor. 31 Cor. xv. 5, 6, 7, dO. 

41 Cor. ix. 1, Incoty tov Kipiov jay ewpaxa. 

Phil. iii. 12, careAnpPhOnv bd Xprotod ‘Inood. 

6 Gal. i. 16, droxaAvWau Tov vidy adrod év éuot. 

7 Eph. iii. 8, cata drroxddupey éyvwpioby jor TO LVOTHPLOV. 

u 


130 PAUL 


shining out of the darkness, as is hinted in second 
Corinthians... So too the Book of Acts,’ using the 
ordinary colours of antiquity, paints it all in that glorious 
blaze of light, in which the appearance of the Divine is 
always represented. 

An experience, which Paul regarded as caused by 
God, which meant the revelation of the living Christ or 
Christ taking inner possession of him, and which in- 
cluded in itself both an inner transformation and the 
call to the Apostolate*® of the before-time persecutor,— 
-that was the occurrence in Damascus for Paul himself. 
And this characterisation of the conversion is amply 
sufficient for the historian. 

Linking this single experience with the whole of 
Paul’s later mystical experience of Christ, we can obtain 
one more important result, by combining together two 
confessions from Galatians. For the man who describes 
his position as a Christian with the phrase : * 


Christ lives in me, 


Damascus was the beginning of that indwelling of 
Christ : | 


God revealed His Son in me. 


What happened at Damascus ought not to be iso- 
lated, but it should be regarded as the basal mystical 
experience of the religious genius to whom also in later 
life extraordinary and even ecstatic experiences were 
vouchsafed.® All that can be called Paul’s Christ- 


12 Cor. iv. 6, 6 Geds 6 eiwv: éx oxdrous Pos Adpe, Os Caper év 
Tais Kapdiats NuUdV mpds Puta pov THS yvdoews THS Odéys TOd Geod ev TpoTerw 
Xpucrov. 

4 Acts ix. 3; xxii. 6,/9: xxvinla: 

®Gal. i. 16, wa ebayyeAiLwpar adrov év toils COveow. 

* Gal. ii. 20, 7 de év éuot Xpicros. 

* Gal. i. 16 (see above, p. 129 note 6). 

° Cf. p. 79 f. above. Rudolf Otto now also emphasises this, see 
Aufsdtze, p. 161. 


PAUL THE CHRISTIAN 131 


mysticism is the reaction to this initial experience. 
Damascus is perhaps the clearest example of an initial 
impulse to reacting mysticism,’ a mystical initiation 
arising from a divine initiative. 

The conversion of the persecutor into a follower and 
of the Pharisee Apostle into the Apostle of Christ was 
a sudden one. Yet it was no magic transformation, 
but had its psychological preparation both negative and 
positive. 

Negative in the experiences through which the soul 
of the young Pharisee had gone in its passionate hunger 
for righteousness under the yoke of the law; in the 
letters of the convert decades later we still hear the 
echo of his sighs at that time: the terrible discovery * 
had come to him as a curse, that even for the most 
earnest conscience, in fact especially for the most ° 
earnest conscience, it was impossible really to keep 
the whole law. 

The positive preparation for the conversion came, 
on the one hand, through the prophetic inwardness of 
the Old Revelation which had influenced Paul even as 
a Jew; on the other hand, through a relatively close 
touch with the genuine tradition of Jesus and with 
the effects wrought by Him in the characters of the 
confessors whom Paul persecuted. I do not regard it 
as probable that the young zealot ever was personally 
acquainted with the earthly Jesus, although weighty 
voices have again declared recently in favour of this 
hypothesis.’ But it is most certainly probable that the 
Pharisee was acquainted with his opponent through — 


1 Cf. on this point Chapter VI. below. 

2 Gal. iii, 10, and many sad words in Romans. 

’ The phrase in 2 Cor. y. 16 is to be understood otherwise ; if ‘ we 
have known Christ after the flesh’ (xara odpxa) refers to personal ac- 
quaintance with the earthly Jesus, then the conclusion ‘now we know 
him so no more’ is a triviality. 


132 PAUL 


His words and the influence He continued to exert 
on His disciples. 

So the lightning of Damascus strikes no empty space 
but finds deep in the soul of the persecutor plenty 
of inflammable material. We see the flame blaze 
upwards and after a generation we can still feel that 
the glow then kindled has lost none of its power in the 
man grown old: Christ is in Paul, Paul in Christ. 


PAUL THE CHRISTIAN (Continued) 


ht 


Ty ee 
rls r& 


er 





CHAPTER VI 


PAUL THE CHRISTIAN (Continued) 


PAUL’S SPIRITUAL EXPERIENCE AS CHRIST-INTIMACY (CHRIST-MYSTICISM). 
PAUL'S EXPERIENCES OF CHRIST. I'UNDAMENTAL CONSIDERATIONS 
ABOUT THE NATURE OF MYSTICISM AND ITS TYPES. THE PECULI- 
ARITY OF THE PAULINE CHRIST-MYSTICISM. 


WE have not merely recognised the secret of Paul’s 
spiritual life but also described it with sacred Pauline 
formulee when we use the two phrases : 


re 


Christ in Paul,! Paul in Christ.? 


It is no doubt generally admitted that Paul’s religious 
experience was Christo-centric; but how differently — 
people view that Christo-centric Christianity of Paul! 
Often Christo-centric has been identified with Christo- 
logical. But Paul’s religion is Christo-centric in a much 
deeper and more realistic sense. It is not first of all 
the product of a number of convictions and elevated 


doctrinés about Christ ; it is ‘fellowship’ with Christ,’ ' 


Christ-intimacy.* Paul lives ‘in’ Christ, ‘in’ the living 


1 Gal. ii. 20, ete. 

2 Numerous passages. Cf. p. 139 ff. below. 

31 Cor. i. 9; x. 16; Phil. iii. 10. The inimitably vivid expression 
iS Kowwvia. 

4 German, ‘ Christ-Innigkeit’—W.E.W.] With the coming of this 
expression ‘ Christ-Innigkeit’ I hope to render a service to those who 
in carrying on Christian work at the present day want to speak about 
Paul’s Christ-mysticism without using a word so productive of mis- 
understanding as ‘Christusmystik. In using this term ‘Christ- 
Innigkeit’ I am consciously linking on to the ancient usage of annic 
and innikeit in the German mysticism of the Middle Ages (cf. Otto 


(135) 


136 PAUL 


and present spiritual Christ, who is about him on all 
sides, who fills him,! who speaks to him,’ and speaks 
in and through him.’ Christ is for Paul not a person 
of the past, with whom he can only come into contact 
by meditating on the words that have been handed 
from him, not a ‘historical’ personage, but a reality 
and power of the present, an ‘energy,’ * whose life-giv- 
ing powers are daily expressing themselves in him,’ 
and to whom, since that day at Damascus, he has felt a 
personal-cult dependence. 

The difference between these two conceptions of 
Paul’s Christo-centric religion can be well expressed in 
Greek by contrasting Christologos and Christophoros.° 
Certainly Paul was also a Christological thinker, but 


Zirker, Die Bereicherung des deutschen Wortschatzes durch die 
spdimuttelalterliche Mystik, Jena, 1923, pp. 66 f. and 12.) For me the 
bridge was our word Gott-Innigkeit. For Zirker’s other references cf. 
p. 297 below. | 

1Gal. i. 20. 42) Cor. xing. 32 Cor. xiii. 3. 

S Philo al GOL ea0 see det alge 

52 Cor. xii. 9; Phil. 11.10; 1 Cor. i. 24; v. 4. I have attempted 
more closely to describe the primitive realism of this Apostolic religion 
of power in the essay, T'ragende und stdhlende Krafte des N.T., in the 
Festgabe fir D. Dr. Julius Kaftan, Tubingen, 1920, pp. 44-55. French 
authors have seriously misunderstood my term ‘ Religion of Power,’ 
ef. Die Hiche, 12 (1924), April issue, p. 240 f. 
| 6 XpurroAdyos and Xpicroddpos. I have no ancient document to 
quote for the first word, but the second comes from the earliest ages 
of Christianity. Probably the first occurrence is Ignatius, Hph. ix. 2, 
where the Christians appear as ‘ procession of the God-bearers, and 
temple-bearers, of Christ-bearers and bearers of holy things’ (écré ovv 
Kal ovvodo. ravTes, Oeopdpor Kal vaohdpor, Xprrropdpor, aytopdpo.). Ancient 
Christendom used this beautiful word still in the fourth century as a 
technical term, for example of one specially gifted in prayer, like 
Paphnutius, a father lately become known to us through the discovery 
of the considerable remnants of his original writings. Cf, H. Idris 
Bell, Jews and Christians in Egypt, London, 1924, pp. 101 and 108 f. ; 
accordingly in my Septwaginta-Papyrt, p. 96 f., in the letter of Justinus, 
xpnotopdp[w] should be read. From the technical term, no doubt 
the proper name Christopher was quickly derived. 


PAUL THE CHRISTIAN 137 


above all and in everything (even in his ‘ Christology’) 
he was a Christ-bearer.* 


We must first of all try to understand the Christ of 
the Apostle. Usually the attempt is made under the 
title ‘The Christology of the Apostle Paul.’ But itis . 
more accurate because more in accord with historical 
sense to inquire about the ‘Christophory’ or ‘ Christ- 
olatry’ of the Apostle, or, if that sounds too strange, 
about his ‘knowledge of Christ,’ about his ‘experiences 
of Christ’ or his ‘revelations of Christ.’ Any tendency 
to petrify the original fellowship with Christ pulsating 
with life into a doctrine about Christ is mischievous. 


Weask what Christ did Paul know, experience, carry | ° 


with him into the world and bring into the depths of 
the souls of his churches? The answer can only be: 
it was the spiritual, living Christ. 

This certainty of Christ, nevertheless, has different 
tendencies. In each case indeed the living, risen Christ 
stands at the centre, but two chief, opposing tendencies 
can be distinguished. 

On the one hand, Christ to the Apostle is the Son of 
God ‘highly exalted’? to the Father, who dwells in 
Heaven above ‘at the right hand’* of God in glory, and 
‘is coming’ soon to the earth as Judge.’ 

This assurance about Christ which has strong Jew- 
ish tendencies, being especially influenced by Psalm cx., 
might be called in doctrinaire phrase the assurance of 
the transcendence of Christ. In more Pauline phrase, 
and therefore historically more correctly, it is called 
the assurance of the ‘highly exalted’ Christ. That 


1This name is furthermore well fitted to mark him out as a 
communion-mystic and to distinguish him from the unity-mystic (on 
this distinction ef. what is said below in this chapter). 

2 Phil. ii, 9, 5 Geds airov trepvpuwcer. 

3 (Following Ps. ex. 1), Col. iii. 1; Hph. i. 20; Rom. viii. 34. 

4 Of, the numerous references to the Parousia in Paul’s letters. 


138 PAUL 


word ‘highly exalted’? is indeed especially Pauline, and 
though in later days it gave very strong stimulus to 
dogma, it was originally not a word artificially formed 
for dogmatic use, but a simple popular expression of. 
the assurance about Christ that sprang out of the cult. 
Even more characteristically Pauline is the other ; 
it exhibits more the Hellenistic-mystical tendency of the 
experience of Christ: the living Christ is the Pneuma. 
As Pneuma, as Spirit the living Christ is not far off, 
above clouds and stars, but near, present on our poor 
earth he dwells and rules in His own. Here again, 
there is no lack of suggestion in this direction in the 
Septuagint, and Paul himself created the significant 
formule : 
The Lord is the Spirit,? 
The last Adam became a life-giving Spirit,3 
He that is joined to the Lord is one Spirit. 


and others like them. Perhaps even more important 
than such symbolical phrases is the fact, that in a 
number of places Paul makes precisely similar state- 
ments of Christ and of the Spirit. This is specially to 
be noted in the parallel use of the mystical formule 
‘in Christ’ and ‘in the (Holy) Spirit.’ The formula 
‘in the Spirit,’ which occurs in Paul’s writings only 
nineteen times, is in almost all these places connected 
with the same specifically Pauline fundamental ideas 
which elsewhere he connects with the formula ‘in 


1 Phil. ii. 9 (cf. John iii. 14; viii. 28; xii. 34). Certainly Isaiah 
xxxill. 10 according to the LXX sounds like a programme of the Pauline- 
Johannine ‘ Christology’: viv dvacrnoopar, A€yeu Kvptos, viv dogacOjoopmat, 
viv vywOyncouo.” (‘Now will I rise up saith the Lord, now will I be 
glorified, now will I be exalted ’). 

22 Cor. iii. 17, 6 d& Kdpios TO zvedud éorw. In the first place this 
sentence is an exegetical note on the immediately preceding quotation 
from the Septuagint; but it is also regarded by itself ‘typical for 
Paul’s view of Christ. 

31 Cor. xv. 45, éyévero . . . 6 éyaros “Addy eis rveda Cworotodv. 

*1 Cor. vi. 17, 6 8& KoANdpevos TE Kupiw ev rvedpd, ear, 


PAUL THE CHRISTIAN 139 


Christ’: faith, righteousness,? being justified,” being 
in,t standing,’ rejoicing and joy,’ free gift,’ love,” 
peace,’ sanctified,” sealed," circumcised and circum- 
cision,” testifying,” speaking,” being filled,” one body," 
the temple of God,!’—all this is seen and experienced 
by the Christian who is ‘in Christ,’ but also by him 
who is ‘in the Spirit’; that means as a matter of fact 
‘in Christ who is the Spirit.’ Therefore also the 
technical expressions ‘fellowship of the Son of God’ 
and ‘fellowship of the Spirit’ are parallel in Paul’s 
use.’ For it always refers to the same experience 
whether Paul says that Christ lives in him,” or that 
the Spirit dwells in us,” and whether he speaks of 
Christ making intercession for us with the Father,” or 
of the Spirit who helps us in prayer.” 

This Christ-experience of the Apostle might be 


manence of Christ ; it is more Pauline and therefore also 


1 Gal. iii. 26, etc. ; 1 Cor. xii. 9. 

29 Cor. v. 21, etc.; Rom. xiv. 17. 

3 Gal. ii. 17; 1 Cor. vi. 11. 41 Cor. i. 30, etc.; Rom. viii. 9. 

5 Phil. iv. 1, ete.; Phil. i. 27. 6 Phil. iii. 1, ete. ; Rom. xiv. 17. 

Biome vias +L Cor. xi.i9. 8 Rom. viii. 39, etc.; Col. i. 8. 

9Phil. iv. 7; Rom. xiv. 17. 

101 Cor. i. 2; Rom. xv. 16, etc.: ef. 1 Cor. vi. 11 where the two 
certainties are stressed together. 

ll Bph. i. 18, etc. ; Eph. iv. 30. 


12 Gol. ii. 11; Rom. ii. 29. 13 Fiph. iv. 17; Rom. ix. 1. 
149 Cor. ii. 17, etc. ; 1 Cor. xii. 3. 
15 Gol. ii. 10; Eph. v. 18. 16 Rom. xii. 5; 1 Cor. xii. 13. 


17 Hiph. ii, 21; Hph. i. 22. 

181 Cor. i. 9; Phil. ii. 1; 2 Cor. xiii. 13. 

19 Gal. ii. 20; cf. 2 Cor. xiii. 5; Rom. vi. 10. 

20 Rom. viii. 9; 1 Cor. iii. 16; vi. 19. 

21 Rom. vili. 34 f. 

22 Rom. viii. 26 ff. In John, who calls the Spirit (J ohn xiv. 16, 26; 
xy. 26; xvi. 7) and Jesus Christ (1 John ii. 1) ‘advocate’ wapaxAnTos 
this great Pauline conviction is still more clearly worked out than in 
Romans. 


# 
ew 


called in doctrinaire phrase the experience of the im- vo 


140 PAUL 


historically more correct to speak of the experience of 
the Spirit-Christ. 


This certainty of the nearness of Christ occurs far 
more frequently in Paul’s writings than the thought of 
the distant Christ ‘highly exalted’ in Heaven. 


Christ in me 


—that is indeed a confession poured forth from the 
depths of the soul, the confession of an assurance 
which illuminates and holds under its sway the remotest 
recesses of the ego. Corresponding to this assurance 


is the other: 
I in Christ. 


Christ is Spirit ; therefore He can live in Paul and 
Paulin Him. Just.as the air of life, which we breathe, 
is ‘in’ us and fills us, and yet we at the same time live 
in this air and breathe it, so it is also with the Christ- 
intimacy of the Apostle Paul: Christ in him, he in 
Christ. 

This primitive Pauline watch-word ‘in Christ’ is 
meant vividly and mystically, as is the corresponding 
phrase ‘Christ in me.’ The formula ‘in Christ’ (or ‘in 
the Lord’) occurs 164 times in Paul’s writings : it is 
really the characteristic expression of his Christianity. 
Much misunderstood by exegetes, rationalised, applied 
to the ‘historical’ Jesus in isolation, and thereby 
weakened, often simply ignored, this formula—so closely 
connected in meaning with the phrase ‘in the Spirit’ — 
must be conceived as the peculiarly Pauline expression 
of the most intimate possible fellowship of the Christian 
with the living spiritual Christ.1. That it is used by 

Compare here and with this whole chapter my essay: Dive 
neutestamentliche Formel ‘in Christo Jesu,’ Marburg 1892. [Now 
published by J. C. B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck), Tiibingen]}. It has taken a 
comparatively speaking long time for the importance of this problem 


to gain general recognition. At the present time, however, the ques- 
tion is well to the front. I set down here, without any attempt at 


PAUL THE CHRISTIAN 141 


Paul with differing shades of meaning is true ;* there 
are, for example, places where it is already used in a 


completeness, the most important contributions: E. Schrader, Dve 
Bedeutung des lebendigen Christus fiir die Rechtfertigung nach 
Paulus, Giitersloh, 1893, pp. 36 ff. and 52; Johannes Weiss, Paulinische 
Probleme, 2. Die Formel év Xpicrd Inoot—Theol. Studien und Kritiken, 
1896; Wilhelm Karl, Beitrdge zwm Verstandmis der soterwlogischen 
Erfahrungen und Spekulationen des Apostels Paulus, Strassburg, 1896 ; 
Julius Boehmer, Das biblische ‘im Namen,’ Giessen, 1898; Lucien 
Delieutraz, De lV Importance de Vexpression ‘év Xpiord “Inood’ dans 
Saint Paul (Thése), Geneva, 1899; Albrecht Dieterich, Hine Mithras- 
liturgie, Leipzig, 1903, 2nd Kd., 1910; Wilhelm Heitmiiller, Tawfe und 
Abendmahl bei Paulus, Gottingen, 1903: Joh. Weiss, Monatsschrift 
fiir Pastoral theologie, 5 (1909), p. 314 f.; Monkeméller in Lehre und 
Wehr (St. Louis), 1911; Bernhard Weiss, T’heol. Stud. wu. Krit., 1911, p. 
531 ff.; W. Bousset, Kyrios Christos (1913), p. 142 ff. ; Eduard Norden, 
Agnostos Theos, Leipzig, 1918, p. 19 ff. ; Traugott Schmidt, Christus in 
uns—Wir in Christus (Dissertation), Gottingen, 1913, cf. also his 
posthumous book: Der Leib Christi (2dpa Xpicrod), Leipzig, 1919; 
Hans Bohlig, Ev xvpé» in Newtestamentl. Studien fiir Georg Heinrict, 
Leipzig, 1914, p. 170 ff.; Joh. Weiss, Das Urchristentum, Gottingen, 
1914, p. 359 ff.; Johannes Lundberg, Kristusmystiken hos Paulus, in 
Uppsala Universitets Arsskrift, 1916 ; W. Morgan, The Religion and 
Theology of Paul, Edinburgh, 1917, Part I; Kurt Deissner, Paulus 
und die Mystik seiner Zeit, Leipzig, 1918, 2nd. Hd., 1921; H. A. A. 
Kennedy, The Theology of the Epistles, London, 1919, Part I., Chap. VL. ; 
Hans Emil Weber, Die Formel ‘in Chrisio Jesu’ wnd die paulinische 
Christusmystik, Neue kirchliche Zeitschrift, 1920 ; J. P. Bang, Var 
Paulus Mystiker ? Teologisk Tidsskrift, 1920; A. M. Brouwer, 
Paulus Mysticus ? Utrecht, 1921; Rudolf Paulus, Das Christus- 
problem der Gegenwart, Tiibingen, 1922; José M. Bover, 8.J., La 
Union Mistica ‘en Cristo Jesus’ segun el Apdstol San Pablo, Barcelona, 
1922; Lyder Brun, Zur Formel ‘in Christus Jesus’ vm Brief des 
Paulus an die Philipper, Symbolae Arctoae, fasc. I., Kristiania (Oslo), 
1922, p. 19 ff.; HE. von Dobschiitz, Zeit und Rawm im Denken des 
Urchristentums, Journal of Biblical Literature, 41 (1922) ; Otto Schmitz, 
in the book referred to more fully below on the use of the genitive by 
Paul (1924), p. 238 ff.; Ernst Sommerlath, Der Ursprung des neuen 
Lebens nach Paulus, Leipzig, 1923, p. 65 ff; Wilhelm Mundle, Das 
religiose Leben des Apostels Paulus, Leipzig, 1928, p. 73; Wilhelm 
Weber, Christusmystik, Leipzig, 1924, especially p. 51 ff. 

1 Johannes Weiss and others have rightly drawn attention to this 
point. 


5 


142 PAUL 


really formal sense. And it may reasonably be assumed 
that the Christ-intimacy of the Apostle itself had also its 
differing degrees of elevation. After the mountain 
peak of Damascus there followed the normal life in 
Christ moving upon a less exalted plane of personal 
experience, then in the rare times of trouble and con- 
secration it rose again to a passionately intensified 
communion of prayer with the Saviour.’ 

Related to this, if not identical with it, is the 
similarly misunderstood formula ‘through Christ,’ which 
also in far the greater number of cases is to be referred 
to the spiritual Christ.’ 


It may now be asked What was Paul’s conception 


of the spiritual Christ? The answer depends upon the 
way in which the Spirit, as Paul uses the term, is 
defined. Here it seems best to start with the sharp 
contrast always made between pnewma, spirit, and 
sara, flesh. Pneuma, at any rate, is something not 
sarkic, not earthly,* not material. True, the Spirit- 
Christ has a soma, a body, but a spiritual body,* that is 
a heavenly body,° a body consisting of divine effulgence.’ 
Sharp, philosophically pointed definition of the concept 
of ‘spiritual’ is happily absent from Paul’s writings. 
The Apostle remains popular, and in ancient style, 
vivid in his formulation. He probably thought of some 
light, ethereal form of existence, such as he doubtless 
attributed to God. But there is no binding definition. 
We have the greatest possible latitude if we desire to 
transplant the Apostle’s ideas of Christ into our religious 
thinking. To Paul the Spirit, God, the living Christ is 

1 Cf. e.g.; 2 Cor. xii! 8 i 

“Cf. Adolph Schettler, Die paulinische Formel ‘Durch Christus,’ 
Tubingen, 1907. 

* The classical passage is 1 Cor. xv. 35 ff. 

41 Cor. xv. 47 ff. 51 Cor. xv. 45 f. 

61 Cor. xv. 47 ff. Phil, iii. 21. 


wie See 


PAUL THE CHRISTIAN 143 


a reality, the reality of all realities ; therefore he does 
not puzzle about definitions. The Spirit that is living in 
Paul searches all things, even the deep things of God’ 
but it brings to light no definition of God. Religious 
definitions are always attempts at salvage, but Paul 
had not suffered shipwreck over the problem of Christ's 
person. 

If Paul had attempted a definition, he would have 
defined like a man of the ancient world, in a manner 
more realistic, more massive, more concrete perhaps 
than a speculative thinker of our own times, but cer- 
tainly not in ordinary materialistic terms. The Spirit 
has nothing of the fleshly, nothing of the earthly; it is 
divine, heavenly, eternal, holy, living, and life-giving— 
these are all predicates which Paul applies to it or could 
apply, and they can all also be applied to the spiritual 
Christ. 

But here there is a point that must not be over- 
looked.?,/ The Spirit-Christ of Paul is no feeble, indis- 
tinct image set up by the phantasy-producing power of 
religious imagination, which evaporates into a boundless, 
empty cloudland ; on the contrary, (He has his hold on 
concrete reality at the cross. He is, and remains, the 
crucified. That is to say, mystical communion with the 
Spirit-Christ transforms all that we call the ‘historical ’ 
Christ, all that found its climax on Golgotha, all that 
had been entrusted to the Apostle as tradition about 
Jesus, into a present reality. It is here that the mystical 
dependence‘ of the cult religion shows itself particularly 
clearly. The basis of facts in the past, which, when re- 
garded only as material for christological formulations, 
may easily become wooden and thus impossible to as- 
similate,—this, as it is made a present reality by the 


11 Cor. i. 10. 2 Cf. below, Chapter VIII. 
3 égravpwpevos, Gal. iii. 1; 1 Cor. 1. 23; Wea 
4See above, pp, 121, 122. 


144 PAUL 


mystical power of the cult, receives again its flow of 
sap. Thereby also the Christ-mystic is protected from 
the danger that threatens him of becoming a ‘reed 
shaken by the wind’ and ‘a man clothed in soft raiment’ 
—the danger that the straying of ‘believing thoughts 
into the broad fields of eternity ’* may lead to nothing 
better than vague, stumbling wandering. 

These great certainties, too, 1t must be confessed, 
were not ‘defined’ by Paul. What he introduced into 
Christ-mysticism was not definitions, but a rich treasure 
of technical phrases, which express,often in popular 
pictorial language, the spiritual communion between 
Christ and His owh. The not unimportant problem of 
setting forth in order this technical vocabulary of Paul, 
a few details of which we have sketched, has not yet 
been solved in all its bearings, and can be mentioned 
here only as an object of research.” He who desires 
to solve it must be at home in the atmosphere and lan- 
guage of the mysticism both of the East and the West. 


The question, What according to Paul brings about 
the communion with Christ? is answered by the hints 
which we have given about Paul’s conversion. It is 
God Who brings about the communion with Christ.’ 
He has the initiative at the mystic initiation. Not that 
every Christian experiences anything like the occurrence 
at Damascus, but everyone who possesses the living 


‘Cf. p. 106 above. The quotation is from the opening lines of the 
well-known hymn of Johann Gottfried Hermann (+ 1791). 

2 Cf. the hints in my lectures, The Religion of Jesus and The Faith 
of Paul. The Selly Oak Lectures, 1923, on the Communion of Jesus 
with God and the Communion of Paul with Christ, London, 1923, p. 
162 ff. (Hxegetical Preliminaries). 

°1 Cor. 1. 9, 80; 2 Cor. i. 21 f.; iv. 6. In this category we must 
also place the passages in which Paul speaks of our being chosen and 
called by God. They ought not to be isolated and made into a separate 
piece of doctrine. 


PAUL THE CHRISTIAN 145 


Christ, or the Spirit, has received Him from God, or 
has been ‘apprehended’ by Christ Himself."| Those 
passages are numerous in which God is celebrated as 
giver of the Spirit.’ 

The assertion that according to Paul baptism is the 
means of access to Christ, I hold to be incorrect. There 
are passages which, taken in isolation, can be made to 
prove it,’ nevertheless it is, I think, more correct to say,; —- 
that baptism does not bring about communion with 
Christ, but seals itt In Paul’s own case, at all events, 
baptism was not the deciding factor, but the Christo- 
phany at Damascus, and not baptism but preaching the 
gospel was in his view the purpose of his apostleship.° 
Also the Lord’s Supper is not for him the real cause of 
communion with Christ, but an expression of that com- 
munion. It is a peculiarly intimate contact with the 
Lord. The Lord’s Supper does not bring about the 
communion, it only brings it into prominence. Neither 
baptism nor the Lord’s Supper is regarded as of magical 
effect.’ The decisive factor in each case is God's grace. . 
The Pauline Christian can say with Paul,° 


By the grace of God I am what I am. 


Powerful and original as the spiritual experience of 
Christ was with Paul, there were not lacking other 
stimuli, which influenced him, derived most directly, I 


sit od av wap ht gal 9 

2 Gal. iv. 6; 1 Cor. vi. 19; ii. 12; Rom. v. 5; viii. 10. 

3 H.g. Gal. ii. 27. 

4 Just as in Rom. iy. 11, circumcision is the seal (c¢payis) of the 
righteous standing already possessed by Abraham. 

Si Cori! 7. pe Clots Sarl. 

71 Cor. x. 1-12. This passage is simply decisive that Paul did 
not hold magical ideas. In this case also single passages about the 
Lord’s Supper must not be isolated, but interpreted along with all the 
others. 

81 Cor. xv. 10, xdpure de Peod eipi 6 eip 

10 


146 PAUL 


think, from the Septuagint religion. The Greek Old 
Testament has, and here we must recognise an important 
Hellenisation of the original, a great number of pro- 
minent passages in which the formule ‘in God’ or ‘in 
the Lord’ are used in a mystical sense. The words of 
the prophet :* 

Yet I will rejoice in the Lord 


sounds like the prelude of the Pauline Jubilate :’ 
Rejoice in the Lord. 


The formula ‘in God’ which is especially frequent in 
the Septuagint Psalms is a great favourite with Paul °* 
and is closely connected with the formula ‘in Christ.’ * 
The confession in the speech on Mar’s Hill,” 


In Him (God) we live and move and have our being, 


comes from the pre-Christian Jewish ° mysticism of Paul 
which had been inspired by the Septuagint, but Paul 
did not understand this being-in-God in a neo-platonic 
sense such as is presented to us in the works of 
Dionysius the Areopagite. The watchword ‘in Christ,’ 
inspired by the Damascus experience, seems to be a 
more vivid substitute for the sacred formula ‘in God.’ 
But it only seems to be so. In reality the wider mystic 
circle ‘in Christ’ les like a concentric circle containing 
the older circle, as though protecting it and inviting to 
that holy of holies ‘in God,’ which from now onwards 

| OXX., Hab. ii. 18, éya de év 7d kupiw d&yadAudoopmar. 

2 Phil. iii, 1; iv. 4, yacpere év xupiv. 

§1 Thess. ii. 2; Col, iii. 3; Eph. iii. 9; Rom. ii. 17. 

41 Thess, i. 1; 2 Thess. i. 1. 

° Acts xvii. 28, év aird yap Zépev Kat xwotpeba Kal éoper. 

°The question of Jewish mysticism before Paul’s time is one that 
greatly needs to be solved. The Septuagint version of the Bible, 
which not infrequently softened the severities of the original in a 
mystical direction and then as the Greek Holy Scriptures had a 
further mystical influence, and Philo are the most important sources. 


PAUL THE CHRISTIAN 147 


appears really accessible’ ‘through Christ’ and ‘in 
Christ.’ ’ 

To speak of Hellenistic influence is surely justifiable 
here, when we remember the importance in Greek 
mysticism of those inspired people who were filled with | 
their God and given power by their God.’ Placed in 
the great context of mysticism in general, Paul’s religion 
gains the stamp which indicates its true place in the 
history of religion. It is Christ-mysticism. 


My energetic advocacy of the classification of Paul’s 
religion as mysticism has had all sorts of results for me: 
sharp aversion and discord, which sometimes expressed 
itself in explosions of extreme irritation, personal 
following, at best of a romantic sort (which was no 
misfortune), at other times tending towards fanaticism 
(which for many is the most painful thing that earth 
produces), ridicule, elaborate irony, friendly caution. 
Looking back upon these experiences, and upon thirty 
years of most fruitful discussion with my students and 
at theological conferences and lecture courses in 
Germany, Sweden and England it has become pertectly 
certain to me, that the explanation, which is certainly 
to be desired, is only possible, as also in the cult 
question,‘ by first of all coming to an understanding as 
to the idea conveyed by mysticism. I ought to have 
done this before. We talk at cross purposes and over 
one another’s heads if we do not do it. And discussion 


1 Eph. ii, 18; iii. 12; Rom. v. 2 (zpocaywy7). 

2 Cf. the diagrams in the Appendix. 

8Of great importance is R. Reitzenstein, Die hellenistischen 
Mysterienreligionen, Leipzig and Berlin, 1910 (2nd Ed., 1920), who 
rightly indicates that Paul. was a mystic even before his conversion. 
Kurt Deissner, Paulus und die Mystik seiner Zeit (see above, p. 141 n.), 
gives a valuable piece of preparatory work in spite of some of his 
results which are not very illuminating. 

4 See above, p. 118 ff. 


148 PAUL 


carried on internationally ' adds further misunderstand- 
ing, as for example when we translate the English term 
Mysticism (which is used in a by no means bad sense) 
into German by Mysticismus, that word of evil associa- 
tions.” 

We must recognise that with us in the last few 
decades the idea of Mystzk* has been employed by many 
in a perfectly definite narrow sense, that of the Neo- 
platonic type of deification mysticism, or to give it a 
more fitting name mystical oneness with the diety. 
Many even think of Mystik in even narrower ways, 
having in mind only well-known caricatures and imita- 
tions. But this narrowing of the idea is only a recent 
academic usage. Even at the time when the conflict 
over Albrecht Ritschl’s attitude to mysticism was blaz- 
ing, Késtlin* very justly protested against the narrowing 
of the idea of mysticism which was already clearly 
coming into fashion, and Reinhold Seeberg?® also is on 


1For our special problem the stimulating chapter ‘Is Paul a 
Mystic’ in Robert Harvey Strachan’s The Indwiduality of St. Paul 
(Qnd EKd., London, c. 1916) must not be overlooked. Paul Wernle 
has repeatedly expressed regret at the confused use of language [cf. 
e.g. Deutsche Lit. Zeitg., 33 (1912), col. 8016 ff., and Die Christliche 
Welt, 27 (1913), col. 1063 f.] and worked out the narrower and wider 
use: for his own part, however, he objects to the wider use. 

2 It ought to be emphasised, that according to my observation the 
numerous Hnglish words ending in -zsm have not the doctrinaire 
stiffness of the German words in -2smus. 

’ Especially in lay circles this word plays a fatal réle. 

* Religion nach dem N.T., mit besonderer Beziehung auf das 
Verhdlinis des Srttlichen und Religidsen und auf das Mystische in der 
Feligion, Theol. Studien u. Kritiken, 61 (1888), p. 82. 

°Cf. p. 150 n. 2. It is interesting that younger scholars who 
have grown up out of living academic contact with the older termin- 
ology, as Friedrich Heiler and Wilhelm Koepp, reject the wider usage 
as a peculiarity of the ‘newer’ Protestant theology (cf. Fr. Heiler, 
Das Gebet, 2nd Hd., Miinchen, 1920, p. 249). Similarly Deissner 
(2nd Hd., p. 184) calls the narrower usage the ‘older’ appealing to 
Heiler. One can see how easily, even in our well-documented world, 


PAUL THE CHRISTIAN 149 


the right line when he speaks of the confiscation of the 
term ‘Mystik’ for the Neo-platonic type. Thus I am 
no innovator, but seek rather to re-establish the old 
German usage, when I understand ‘ Mystzk’ in the wider 
sense and give the name Mystik to fevery religious 
tendency that discovers the way to God direct through 
inner experience without the mediation of reasoning. 
‘The constitutive element in mysticism is immediacy of , 


contact with the diety. hes 


There is a double bifurcation of the types of mysti- 
cism according as they are judged by their origin or by 
their results, and this leads on to a great multitude of 
blendings and combinations in which widely differing 
forms are often found in union. 

First, when we investigate the question of origins, 
we see that ‘great dividing’ line in the history of 
religion, which we noted in the case of the cult,’ also 
‘drawn through the history of mysticism. The decisive 
matter is the initiative: who is it that gives (or gave in 
the first instance) the impulse to the mystical movement 
of the soul? There is acting mysticism and re-acting 


traditions can be broken. Much valuable material on this question 
and on the use of language is given by Georg Wobbermin, Das 
Wesen der Religion, Leipzig, 1921, pp. 147 ff, 265 ff, 291 ff, and 
457 £.; by Rudolf Otto, Das Heilige, 11th Hd., Stuttgart, Gotha, 
1923, pp. 21 ff., 99, and Aw/fsédtze, p. 71 ff. [English translation of Das 
Heilige, from 9th German Ed., by J. W. Harvey, The Idea of the Holy, 
Oxford, 1923, pp. 21 ff, 88]; Erich Schaeder, Das Geistproblem der 
Theologie, Leipzig, 1924, p. 18 ff. Wobbermin’s concise but full notice 
in Theol. Lit. Zeitg., 49 (1924), p. 383 f., must also be considered. The 
therein-mentioned reference to the important British investigators 
of mysticism, Baron Friedrich von Hiigel, William Ralph Inge, and 
Evelyn Underhill (Mrs. Stuart Moore), I would here emphasise and 
pass on. It is thanks to these contemporaries that in England an 
atmosphere peculiarly adapted for the understanding of mysticism has 
lately been produced. 
1 See above, p. 117 ff. 


150 PAUL 


mysticism, a@nabatic and catabattc mysticism. Man ap- 
proaches God, or God approaches man.’ Mysticism of 
performance or mysticism of grace!’ Striving mysticism 
and mysticism of the divine giit.° 

Secondly the aim of mysticism is either wnio or 
communio; either oneness with God, or fellowship with 
God; either loss of the human personality in God or 
sanctification of the personality through the presence of 


1¢The one asserts ability to contro] God, the other to be controlled 
by God, the one to compel God, the other to be compelled by God.’ 
(G. Mehlis, Formen der Mystik, Logos IL., p. 242 f., rightly quoted by 
H. E. Weber (Neue kirchliche Zeitschrift, 31 (1920), p. 234) as a good 
characterisation of the types. 

2 Reinhold Seeberg (Christliche Dogmatik, vol. i., p. 42 f., Leipzig, 
1924), with a profound knowledge of the subject, makes a similar 
classification: ‘The specific distinguishing characteristic of religious 
mysticism’ consists in this ‘that the human will feels itself moved by 
the divine will without any rational intervention being recognised.’ 
Similarly (p. 63 f.) mystical experiences consist ‘in a movement of life 
or will directly caused by the divine energy, and this forms an inspira- 
tion which powerfully sets in motion the whole inner life.’ He goes 
on to describe the transformation of this ‘voluntative mysticism of 
experience with its fresh and living religious life,’ into the ‘ mysticism 
of knowledge’ (p. 64), in which the object ‘is the increase of knowledge 
obtained by means of ecstatic gaze or contemplation guided by cult 
methods.’ ‘This form of mysticism, which through Neo-platonism has 
penetrated deeply into Christianity and for that reason has often in 
current usage appropriated the term mysticism for itself, is really to be 
regarded as a phenomenon of the senility of religion or of periods in 
the history of religion threatened with scepticism’ (p. 64). This is 
important also for the question as to the meaning of the term mysticism 
which was touched upon above. For the distinction between acting 
and re-acting mysticism, cf. the words of Tillich quoted in note’3 to 
page 80 above. My distinction between acting and re-acting mysticism 
(first made in The Religion of Jesus and the Fath of Paul, London, 
1923, p. 196 ff.) is approved by A. E. Garvie, The Expository Times, 
Vol. 36, No. 6 (March, 1925), p. 250. 

*[In the German the word ‘charismatisch’ is used, which it 
seemed better to paraphrase, as in English ‘charismatic’ is not in 
frequent use.—W.H.W.]. 


PAUL THE CHRISTIAN 151 


God; either transformation into the deity, or conforma- 
tion of the human towards the divine ; either participa- 
tion in the deity or prostration before the deity. In 
fact ego-centric mysticism or Theo-centric mysticism! 
Mysticism of esthetic intoxication or mysticism of 
ethical enthusiasm! Mysticism that denies personality, 
or mysticism that affirms personality !° 

I make no attempt to set forth in detail those 
blendings and combinations of the different types, nor 
to describe even for example the reaction mysticism 
which has lost its original nature and become reduced 
to the pure acting type, or the acting wnzo-mysticism, or 
the peculiar form of communio-mysticism which develops 


1The further development of the characterisation formulated 
above has been the special work of Nathan Sdderblom. To his 
writings already cited by F. Heiler in Das Gebet the following should 
be added: Hit bidrag till den krisina uppenbarelsetrons tolkning 
(Uppsala Universitets Arsskrift, 1911, Program 6); Oversikt av 
allmdinna religionshistorien, 3rd Ed., Stockholm, 1919; Baron Friedrich 
von Hiigels andliga sjdlvdeklaration in Studer tillégnade Magnus 
Pfannenstill, Lund, 1822, p. 168 f. The Archbishop in a letter of 
Sept. 26, 1924, referred me to his lectures at Munich on the difference 
between practising mysticism and revelation-mysticism. This last 
formulation is related to my own (acting and re-acting mysticism). 
Cf. also Adalbert Merx, Idee und Grundlinien einer allgemeinen Geschichte 
der Mystik (Academical Address), Heidelberg, 1898, p. 10: ‘The aim 
of the endeavours of such souls is to attain complete insight into the 
Being of God; and the progressive unity with Him that is derived 
from that is thought of by some as losing oneself in Him, by others is 
regarded as compatible with the retention of their own personality.’ 
Heiler’s well-known division of personal religion into mysticism and 
prophetic religion, is like a division of railway trains into passenger 
trains and express trains. But no doubt he had in mind the narrower 
type of mysticism. General-Superintendent Zoellner very correctly 
formulates Christian communio-mysticism in the journal ‘ Das Evan- 
gelische Deutschland, 1 (1924), p. 12: ‘Hven Christianity recognises 
mysticism, even Christianity emphasises the irrational. But it is the 
mysticism of fellowship with the personal God, which does not 
extinguish personality and self-consciousness but raises them to 
perfection.’ 


152 PAUL 


into wnio-mysticism. Only I must obviously explain 
one thing, namely how I classify Paul, the mystic.’ 


Paul is a reacting mystic and a communio-mystic. 
He was even as a Jew a fellowship mystic, but an 
acting mystic at any rate as regards his longings,’ only 
it would seem that through his action he did not reach 
real communion with God.’ He felt the fact that he 
remained far off from God to be the bankruptcy of 
‘works,’ the tragedy of. this can still be felt as we read 
the letters he wrote as a Christian. It was Damascus 
that transformed his acting mysticism into the reacting 
mysticism and the soul shaken and thrown open to 
creative energy by that impact from that time onwards 
had its firm support ‘in Christ’: In communion with 
Christ he found communion with God ;* Christ-intimacy 


1T have referred above (p. 114 n. 2) to HE. von Dobschiitz, who in his 
great review of my Licht vom Osten, 4th Ed. (just the sample of what 
a critique intended to encourage a colleague should be), in denying my 
theory of a Christ-cult, founds his argument upon too narrow a con- 
ception of cult. The same applies to his criticism of my view 
of Paul as a mystic (in above-mentioned review, p. 326 ff). Here also 
he works with an entirely too narrow conception, not without letting 
it be seen later that a wider conception of mysticism is possible, but to 
use it is to regard all piety as mystical (p. 327, cf. p. 329). I would 
not entirely deny the last. But for the rest there is some misunder- 
standing, if von Dobschiitz (p. 328) thinks I class mysticism with the 
mysteries. The mysteries are in most cases mysticism which has 
developed into a cult, but everywhere where they have degenerated to 
pure action they have been false to their origin and replace mysticism 
by magic. On the other hand, there are very numerous forms of 
mysticism which are (and remain) free from the mysteries. 

* He himself would probably have spoken of it as dzoxapadoxia, 
Rom. viii. 19. 

* This can be expressed with his words of Rom. xi. 7 (though they 
referred to something else), 6 éméyret “IopanA toto oix érérvyev, ‘ That 
which Israel seeketh for, that he obtained not.’ 

* Here I think I touch H. Weber’s more profound conception (Die 
Formel ‘in Christo Jesu, p. 229 f.). 


PAUL THE CHRISTIAN 153 


was experience and confirmation of God-intimacy.* 
He was not deified nor was he transformed into spirit 
by this communion, nor did he become Christ. _ He was 
not like some who at a later day imagined themselves 
Christ,? though they were only possessors of a second- 
hand Christology and were further removed from Christ 
than was Paul.? But he was transformed by God, he 
became spiritual and he was one whom Christ possessed * 
and a Christ-bearer.° 

Paul himself was conscious of the difference between 
acting and reacting mysticism. His conflict with the 
‘spirituals ’ at Corinth ® is the protest of reacting mysti- 
cism against the ecstatic chaos caused by the mysticism 
of intoxicated enjoyment developing into unrestrained 
action. But he had also conquered in the same battle 


10f. the diagram below in the Appendix. For this whole 
section see also the valuable attempt at a general statement made by 
Wilhelm Weber (Mannheim) in Christus-Mystik. Hine religions- 
psychologische Darstellung der paulunischen Christusfrommigkett, Leip- 
zig, 1924 (in H. Windisch’s Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament, 
Heft 10). | 

2 Gal. ii. 20, cf. iv. 19 and other passages are not intended in this 
sense. 

3 Cf, Harnack, Lehrbuch der Dogmengeschichte, 1., p. 788 (4th Hd., 
1909). 

4Gal. iii. 29; v. 24; 1 Cor. i. 12; iil. 23; xv. 930) 2 Corex., (che 
Licht vom Osten, 4th Ed., p. 322 f.). 

5 Of. above, p. 186. Paul might also be called one who was ‘ through- | 
Christ’ if the vivid expression were not too unusual. I saw the word 
durchchristen (although used in an un-Pauline acting sense) first in 
Christian Morgenstern’s Wir fanden eimen Pfad, Neue Gedichte, 
Miinchen, 1919, p. 18: 


«. . . doch wer’s ganz vollbringet, 
siegt sich zum Stern, 

Schafft, sein selbst Durchchrister, 
Neugottesgrund— 

und ihn grisst Geschwister 
Ewiger Bund.’ 


6 1 Cor. xil-xiv. 


154 PAUL 


within his own breast, when the old mystical activism 
had whispered to him its words of temptation, ervtzs 
sicut Deus—‘ye shall be as God.’ No doubt it was out 
of such a struggle that that wonderful paradox was 


born: 
I—yet not I 


which repeatedly flashes out of the lines of his letters.’ 


A generation ago, in my student days, a heavy hand 
stretched out from the side of the dogmatists and 
banished mysticism, which was forced into one narrow 
pattern, from the German lecture-rooms.? The study 


11 Cor. xv. 10 (ef. also vii. 10); Gal. ii. 20. 

2For criticism of Ritschl’s position cf. Wilhelm Dilthey, Das 
Problem der Religion, 1911, in Gesammelte Schriften, vol. vi., 2nd 
half, Leipzig and Berlin, 1924, p. 300 f. I would like to quote 
Dilthey’s most interesting words: ‘If Ritschl and his school thought 
more historically, if frankly in Ritschl’s historical intuition the course 
of historical process was more profoundly grasped in the concrete 
example of Christian piety, if he endeavoured to understand the value 
of the religious structure through a study of its actuality in history, 
if he made a freer pathway for theology, by discarding with neo- 
Kantianism every rational, metaphysical system, and so making a 
freer broader space for the irrational character of religion, yet this 
remarkable mind was at the same time so closely confined, that thereby 
everyone of his fundamental conceptions were, in spite of their deriva- 
tion from history, not true to history. The outlook on universal 
history [typical of Schleiermacher’s] Reden, in which lay the germ 
of the coming general science of religion, was given up by him. 
Schleiermacher’s recognition of the importance of mysticism in religion 
was pushed on one side owing to an unhistorical hatred of the mystical 
element in religion. The importance of religious experiences in the 
history of what religion has produced were beyond the comprehension 
of this dry-as-dust mind. ‘Thus also in concentrating his studies upon 
Christianity alone he failed to give true value to the experience which 
lies at the basis of Christianity. For the experience of Jesus of God’s — 
action in Him, can only be thought of as a mystical experience, that 
is as immediate perception. And just as he did not understand the 
importance of mysticism in the experience of Christ Himself go like 
the experience of Paul in visions, the ecstacies of the solitaries become 


PAUL THE CHRISTIAN 155 


of Paul suffered, along with other things, from this 
anathema. The few scholars who then emphasised the 
mystical element in Paul could have appealed to teachers 
ereater than Albrecht Ritschl. Luther 1 and Calvin had 
a sympathetic understanding of the Apostle’s Christ- 
mysticism, and going further back we find the real Paul 
alive in the ancient Church, especially in the Greek 
Fathers.2 But the greatest monument of the most 
eenuine understanding of Paul's mysticism is the gospel 
and epistles of John. Their Logos-Christ is the Spirit- 
Christ, once more made incarnate for the congregation 
of the saints in a time of fierce conflict, by the evangelist 
who was inspired in equal degree by the earthly Jesus, 
by Paul and by the Spirit-Christ. 

This also supplies the answer to the question, How 
did Paul influence later thought? The witty saying 
that in the second century only ove man understood 
Paul (Marcion) and he misunderstood him, only has 
truth in it, if the enquiry as to Paul’s influence is con- 
fined to his ‘doctrine,’ perhaps indeed to the ‘doctrine 
of Justification.’ But if enquiry be made about Christ- 
mysticism, the traces of the Apostle’s influence are clear, 
and shine through from the most ancient times down to 
our own day, being seen not least clearly in the two 
Catholic Churches. 

There can be no doubt that Paul became influential 


confused with the neo-platonic aceticism, vision and ecstacy. In 
pantheistic mystic, in the religious life of the sects and in pietism he 
only saw counterfeits of Christianity.’ 

1Hans Emil Weber has rightly drawn our attention to the 
pressing need of a clear light on the Christ-mysticism of Luther 
(Das Geisteserbe der Gegenwart und die Theologie, Leipzig and Hr- 
langen, 1925, p. 86). 

2Tt is an indication of good understanding that even in the four- 
teenth century Nikolaos Kabasilas entitled his book on Mysticism 
‘Life in Christ’ (wept rijs év Xpiord Cw7js). Cf. Die Mystik des Nikolaus 
Cabasilas, edited and explained by W. Gass, Greifswald, 1849. 


156 PAUL 


in the world’s history precisely through his Christ- 
mysticism.’ The spiritual Christ was able to do what 
a dogmatic Messiah could not have done. ‘The dog- 
matic Messiah of the Jews is fettered to the country 
of his origin. The spiritual Christ could move from 
place to place. Coming from the East, He could be- 
come at home in the West, and in defiance of changing 
centuries He could spread out His arms over every 


generation. 
The Spirit bloweth where it listeth.? 


Paul would certainly not have had this influence on 
the great scale, if the fires of the mystical elements in 
him had consumed the ethical. On the contrary, the 
ethos in his case stood the test of fire. The Pauline 
Christ-intimacy is no magic transformation, and it is 
no intoxication of ecstatic enthusiasts who are left as 
yawning sluggards when the transport is over. Paul 
himself subordinated ecstacy to ethos.* Thus we may 
rightly and fittingly apply to him the conception of 
‘voluntary ’ mysticism, which has lately come into vogue, 
understanding thereby ‘ the inner coming of the spiritual 
lite-energy which directs us in the depths of our own 
being.’* Christ-mysticism is in him rather a glowing 
fire than a flickering flame. He who was ‘apprehended ’ 
by Christ speaks with deep humility :° 

Not that I have already obtained [Him]. 


But he also makes the heroic confession : ° 
I can do all things in Him that strengtheneth me. 


1 Cf. with this also Max Meinertz, Mystik und Mission, Zeitschrift 
fir Missionswissenschaft, 13 (1923). 

2 John iii. 8. $1 Cor. xiii. 1-3. 

*R. Seeberg, Die Lehre Luthers (Lehrbuch der Dogmengeschichte, 
iv., 12/3), Leipzig, 1917, p. 310. Cf. above, p. 150 n.1. For historical 
information on ‘ voluntary’ mysticism see Erich Seeberg, Zur Frage 
der Mystik, Leipzig and Erlangen, 1921, p. 380 ff. 

* Phil. iii. 12 ff., od dre 73 CAaBov .. . 


° Phil. iv. 18, rdvra ioxtw év 7G evdvvapodvri pe. 


PAUL THE CHRISTIAN 157 


Similarly, too, the gifts of the Spirit set the saints 
of Paul’s churches mighty tasks: they who had ‘put 
on Christ,’ were daily to put Him on anew,’ and ‘in’ 
this Christ only that faith is of value whose energy is 
proved by love.* 


Let us look back for a moment! Christ the Living, 
exalted with the Father, but by God’s Grace as Spirit 
in Paul and Paul in Him—that is the Apostle Paul’s 
assurance of Christ and experience of Christ. Accord- 
ing to the doctrinaire view ‘ Paulinism’ contains at this 
point an ‘antinomy’ through the ‘dualism’ of the trans- 
cendence and immanence of Christ. But in fact we see 
here two moods of Paul’s piety, which could exist side 
by side in his great soul. They no more represent an 
internal contradiction than do the mutually intertwined 
experiences of the transcendent and the immanent God 
which every believer knows. Rather it is the polar 
contrast of these two moods that gives the inner life of 
the Apostle its prophetic tension. 

This tension finds its release in an abundance ot 
detailed assurances, experiences, and confessions. 


pCi), ili 27. 2Rom. xiii. 14. 
3 Gal. v. 6, riotis Ov aydarns evepyousern. 





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CHAPTER VII 


PAUL THE CHRISTIAN (Continued) 


‘Parra In CuHrist’ AS THE EXPERIENCE OF SALVATION. ‘THE UNITY 
OF THE EXPERIENCE OF SALVATION, AND THE VARIETY OF ITS 
FORMS OF EXPRESSION. 


Wir the assurance of Damascus ‘Christ in me’ and 
the assurance of equal content ‘I in Christ,’ an inex- 
haustible religious ‘energy’* was concentrated in the 
deep, and to religious impulses extremely sensitive, soul 
of the convert. In every direction Paul now radiated 
the ‘power of Christ’’ that ruled in him, gave out the 
‘riches of Christ,’* the ‘blessing of Christ,’* and the 
‘fulness of Christ’ ° which had come to him. 

To designate this abundant ‘ power of Christ,’ which 
flowed through him and took effect from him, Paul used 
a well-known technical religious word, the Greek term 
pistis, which we are accustomed to translate ‘faith.’ 

Though one of the most frequently considered Pauline 
‘conceptions, the faith of the Apostle can perhaps be 
more precisely formulated than it usually is. Generally 
faith as used by Paul is defined as believing ‘ on’ Christ, 
and thus the frequent genitival construction the ‘ faith of 
Christ Jesus,’ ® and the prepositional constructions ‘ faith 


1Cf. above, p. 136, notes 4 and 6. 
22 Cor. xii. 9, 4 Svapus Tod Xpiorod ; cf. 1 Cor. v. 4. 
3 Eph. iii. 8, 76 rAodros Tod Xpiorod; cf. il. 7. 
4Rom. xv. 29, sokoyia Xpirrov. 
: Aes: iv. 13, 76 tAjpwpa Tod XpioTov. 
6 riotis Xpuorow "Inood, Gal. ii. 16, 20; iii. 22; Eph. ili, 12 5 Phil. 
iii. 9; Rom. iii. 22, 26. 
(161) im 


162 PAUL 


in Christ Jesus,’? and ‘to believe in Christ Jesus,’? are 
identified with belief ‘on’ Christ. 

I believe that this proceeding obliterates a character- 
istic Pauline feature on one of the most important points. 
Faith is in Paul’s usage faith ‘in’ Christ, that is to say, 
’ faith is something which is accomplished in union of life 
with the spiritual Christ. That is the meaning of those 
passages in which Paul connects the preposition ‘in’® 
with the words ‘ faith,’ ‘ believer,’ ‘ believe,’ and also of 
the passages in which the genitival construction appears. 

It is not yet generally recognised * that Paul uses the 
genitive ‘of Jesus Christ’ in a wholly peculiar manner. . 
We have numerous passages in Paul in which the usual 
rough classification of ‘subjective genitive ’ or ‘ objective 
genitive’ is insufficient. Later Greek (and Latin) has 
also in addition to these a genitival use, sometimes 
rather remarkable, which is to some extent the result 
of the survival of an older type.’ So, too, in Paul, it 


lriotis é€v Xptoro "Inood, Gal. iii. 26; v. 6; Col. i. 4; ii. 5 (eis) ; 
Ephii 15; 1 Tim. i. 145) 132 ini se it: 

* motevew eis Xptorov ‘Incotv, Gal. ii. 16; Phil. i. 29 (Eph. i. 18). 
Cf. ‘the faithful in Christ’ [lit. believers], ruorol év Xpuor@ ‘Inood, Eph. i. 
is SCL. | 

° év or eis, the distinction between the two prepositions is not great 
in popular Greek. 

4 Otto Schmitz, Die Christus-Gemeinschaft des Paulus im Lichte 
seines Genetivgebrauchs, Gitersloh, 1924, has now thoroughly investi- 
gated this problem. Here and there, perhaps, he sees genitival con- 
structions with too indistinct lines between them, but he has raised for 
the exegesis of many Pauline passages new questionings and new sug- 
gestions by means of abundance of most original, detailed observations. 
Martin Dibelius (Theologische Blatter, 3 [1924], col. 282 ff.) agrees with 
the final outcome of Schmitz’ work, but reduces the number of these 
genitives. His weighty hints on the Pauline final clauses ought also 
to be noted. He rightly regards them also as an example of gram- 
matical phenomena used as expressions of a religious phenomenon. 

* Cf. EH. Nachmanson, Syntakt. Inschriftenstudien, Eranos, 9 (1909), 


p. 30 ff, and Hinar Léfstedt, Genetivus Causae im Latein, Eranos, 9 
(1909), p. 82 ff. 


PAUL THE CHRISTIAN 163 


would be possible to establish the use of a special type 
of genitive, which might be called the ‘ genitive of fellow- 
ship’ or the ‘mystical genitive,’* because it indicates 
mystical fellowship with Christ. ‘Of Jesus Christ’ is 
here in the main identical with ‘in Christ.’ 

‘The faith of Christ Jesus’ is ‘ faith in Christ,’? the 
faith which the Christian has in fellowship with Christ. 

Numerous other religious root ideas are similarly 
bound up with the mystical genitive.* Alongside ‘ faith 
of Christ’ we find in Paul the ‘love of Christ,’* the 
‘hope of Christ,’*® the ‘peace of Christ,’® the ‘meekness 
and gentleness of Christ,’’ the ‘tender mercies of Christ,’ * 


1The name of this genitive and the problem itself are both rejected 
by several of my critics with merry irony. There is nothing to prevent 
them making merry if they like, but I cannot give them the feeling for 
language which they lack. It is something one either has or has not. 
Anyone who concerns himself with Greek Syntax, a study, on the 
whole, unaccountably neglected by our generation, knows what an 
abundance of interesting new problems there are precisely connected 
with the use of cases. And original expressions cannot be classified 
by means of terms whose meaning has been worn away by technical 
use. Also Wilhelm Havers’ ‘Dativus Sympatheticus’ (Untersuch- 
ungen zur Kasussyntax der indogermanischen Sprachen, Strassburg, 
1911) will raise merriment amongst the critics whose feelings are 
dulled, but it has awakened ‘sympathetic feelings amongst linguists 
and philologists’ (cf. A. Debrunner, Deutsche Lit. Zeitg., 33 (1912), p. 
991). Schmitz (p. 237) thinks that there is no need to have a separate 
name for the genitive considered above. That, of course, is a matter for 
discussion, but there is some advantage in indicating the problem with 
a vivid short designation. 

2 Of. passages above, p. 161, note 2 ff. 

[At this point the author says ‘this can best be imitated in 
German by a compound substantive’ and writes Christ-faith, Christ- 
love, etc. Such forms are not really adapted to our Hnglish usage, 
so the genitival forms as they appear in our English Bible are used in 
translation.—L.R.M.8.]. 

49 Cor. v. 14; Eph. iii. 19; Rom. viii. 35, 7 &ydarn Tov Xpiarov. 

51 Thess. i. 8,  éAmis tod Kuplov av "Incod Xpictov. 

6 Col. iii. 15, 4 eipyvy Tod Xpuotov. 

79 Cor. x. 1, 4 zpavtys Kat émveixera TOD Xpirrov. 


§ Phil. i. 8, crAayxva Xpicrod ‘Inood. 


164 PAUL 


the ‘patience of Christ,’* the ‘ obedience of Christ,’? the 
‘truth of Christ,’ * the ‘fear of Christ,’* the ‘ circumcision 
of Christ,’® the ‘sufferings of Christ,’° the ‘afflictions 
of Christ,’” and other similar technical expressions.° 
Throughout it is understood that these special experi- 
ences or assurances of the soul in the Christian come 
about through the mystic-spiritual fellowship with 
Christ. 

So too ‘the faith of Christ’ is faith which is alive 
in fellowship with the spiritual Christ, and it is faith 
‘on’*® God, in its content identical with the faith which 
Abraham had in the sacred past, an unconditional 
reliance upon the living God in spite of all temptations 
to doubt. This faith of Abraham,” heroic by its 
‘nevertheless,’ which afterwards was made impossible 
by the law," has in Christ again become possible and 
real for us. ‘Separated from Christ,’ Paul says in 
one place,” we are ‘without God in the world’; in 
union with Christ we have boldness to approach God.* 

The faith of Paul is then the union with God which 


12 Thess. ili. 5, 7 tropovy Tod Xpicrod. 

22 Cor. x. 5, 7 traKor Tod Xpuctov. 

32 Cor. xi. 10, dAnjbeva Xpicrod. 

4 Eph. v. 21, ddBos Xpiorod ; cf. 2 Cor. v. 11. 

§ Col. i. 11, 4 repirouy tod Xpicrod. 

6 Phil. iii. 10; 2 Cor. i. 5, ra rabyyata tod Xpicrod. 

"Col. i. 24, ai OrAtWers tod Xpicrod. On these two last expressions 
cf. Arnold Steubing, Der paulinische Begriff ‘ Christusleiden, Diss. 
Heidelberg, Darmstadt, 1905. 

SCf. eg. the conceptions mentioned above, p. 161 f., ‘the power 
of Christ,’ ‘the riches of Christ,’ ‘the blessing of Christ,’ ‘the fulness 
of Christ, and the complete list given by Schmitz, p. 268. 

*This ‘on’ (ért) is by Paul joined with ‘God,’ Rom. iv. 5, 24 
(ix. 33),'x, 1.1: with § Christ vis TimmuslG, , 


19 Rom. iv. 12, 16 aiécris "ABpadp. Gal. iii, 12, 23. 
2 Hph. ii. 12, pre . . . xwpls Xpucrod . . . dOeor év 7h KOT MLO. 


* Hph. iii. 12, év & éxomev tiv wappyoiav Kal mpooaywyiy év TeToLOnoer 
dua THS TicTews abrov; cf. also Hph. iii. 17. 


PAUL THE CHRISTIAN 165 


is established in fellowship with Christ. It is, like that 
of Abraham, an unshakable confidence in the grace of 
God. God-intimacy in Christ Jesus, God-intimacy of 
those who are Christ-intimates,' that is Paul’s faith. 

The unshakableness, which often makes faith appear 
as something paradoxical, is just as important as the 
other characteristic, that faith as Paul uses the term 
is not a conviction reached by reason, but something 
practical, an inner personal dependence, an attitude otf 
the personality, and inner bearing. Thus Paul's con- 
ception of faith is to be transferred out of the sphere 
of dogma into that of mysticism and cult religion. 
‘Faith or consciousness of faith and mysticism belong 
together,’ ” 

And now we must try to recognise this ‘faith of 
Christ’ of the Apostle as the centre of energy, from 
which the many separate confessions concerning salva- 
tion in Christ radiate. We must seek to understand 
the rich variety of Pauline experience and testimony 
about salvation which finds expression in the con- 
fessions in Paul’s letters as refractions of the one beam 
of light, ‘faith of Christ.’ 

Here, in my opinion, lies the most important pro- 
blem of the study of Paul, as far as that is concerned 


1% Oeov eva ev Xpiord Inyood—thus it could be even more clearly 
expressed in Greek. The phrase coined by Paul himself might also 
be applied, Col. iii. 3, ‘hid with Christ in God’ if it could be divested 
of its narrower sense (eschatological) in the place where it occurs and 
applied in a more general sense. 

2This profound sentence of Schaeder (Geistproblem, p. 118) can 
rightly be applied to Paul. The same may be said of the term ‘ Paith- 
mysticism’ used by E. Weber, Die Formel ‘in Christo Jesu,’ p. 235 ff. 
(also Th. Lit. Blatt., 45 [1924], col. 89), and Schaeder, p. 120 ff. The 
right suggestion already was made by M. Dibelius in Lietzmann’s 
Handbuch, iii, 2nd Ed. (1912), p. 108. E. Brunner, in Die Mystik 
und das Wort, p. 122, 1st Ed., completely misapprehends the exegetical 
result. Further on‘ Faith-mysticism’ cf. also Mundle, Das relig. Leben 
des Ap, Paulus, p. 71. 


166 PAUL 


with Paul’s inner self. The solution of the problem 
lies in the recognition that the Pauline testimonies 
concerning salvation are psychically synonymous. 

In the older study of Paul it was generally the custom 
first to isolate the so-called ‘concepts ’ of justification, 
redemption, reconciliation, forgiveness, and so forth, and 
then from these isolated and thereby theologically 
stiffened ‘concepts’ to reconstruct the ‘system’ of 
‘Paulinism.’ Paulinism so constructed appeared ac- 
cording to one theologian as a triangle, according to 
another as a square or a hexagon, and occasionally it 
looked like the side view of a staircase—in any case it 
was very geometrical and conventional. In our con- 
ception of it also there are straight lines, but they do 
not form closed geometrical figures, rather like rays of 
light, unlimited and immeasurable, they stream in all 
directions from the central point, the light of the 
experience of Christ. 

It was the result of that dogmatic method with its 
isolation and imposed system, that ‘Paulinism’ ap- 
peared so hard and cold, so calculated and scholastic, 
so angular and complicated and so difficult to assimilate, 
and that on account of ‘Paulinism’ Paul seemed to 
many to be ‘the evil genius of Christianity.’ ” 

Ii however we may draw conclusions as to character — 
from historical effects, then we may say: the message 
of Christ which the tentmaker of Tarsus preached to 
the simple people of the great Hellenistic cities in the 
age of the Ceesars, must have been simple—or at any 
rate understandable by the simple—transporting and 


‘Compare the diagram below in the Appendix. 

* Adolf Friedrich Graf von Schack coined this expression (see 
above, p. 4) in 1849 in J erusalem, as he drew a contrast between the 
teaching of the great Master, Jesus, and the fantastic ideas of Paul, 


the fanatic (cf. his Autobiography, Hin halbes Jahrhundert, ii., Stuttgart, 
1889, p. 265 ff.). 


PAUL THE CHRISTIAN 167 


inspiring to the common people. There is a way by 
which we can recognise even to-day the popular 
simplicity of the Pauline gospel. We must take 
seriously the observation, which is also to be made in 
the case of Luther,! Paul Gerhardt,’ Herder* and most 
other classical religious writers, that in the numberless 
confessions about Christ which follow one another 
without system in the letters of Paul the reference is 
not to a diversity of many objects but to a diversity of 
the psychological reflections of the one object of re- 
ligion. To this one object the confessor bears witness 
in a continually new variation of figurative words of 
similar meaning and often with the parallelism of 
prophetic emphasis. And it is our business to grasp 
the figurativeness, the ancient popular pictorial charac- 
ter of these testimonies. 


We will select only those of Paul’s pictorial ex-— _, 


pressions for salvation in Christ, which have most 
seriously suffered violence at the: hands of Paulinism- 
investigators. There are other synonyms, but the | 
following five are the most important: justification, | 
reconciliation, forgiveness, redemption, adoption (Luther | 
uses the word ‘ sonship’). 

These classical words have exerted such an enor- 
mous influence upon later dogma that they have them- 
selves in the passage of centuries become covered with 


10f. eg. the so-called Autobiography of 1546 which M. Rade 
translated ‘Die Christliche Welt,’ 29 (1915), col. 875 ff, especially 
col. 901, where Luther gathers up ‘the same sense in other words.’ 
G. Kawerau has here rightly indicated a great problem for investigation 
(Theol. Lit. Zeitg., 41 (1916), col. 277). 

2Hugen Aellen, Quellen und Sial der Lieder Paul Gerhardts, Bern, 
1912. 

3 Blisabeth Hoffart, Herders ‘ Gott, Halle, 1918, p. 74. 

4Tt would be a valuable piece of work again to restore all of them 
to their ancient pictorial meaning as | have endeavoured to do with 
the five here mentioned. 


168 PAUL 


so thick a coating of dogmatic verdegris, that for many 
people it has become difficult to recognise their original 
meaning. But to the pre-dogmatic simple person of 
the ancient world the original meaning was clear 
because he understood without difficulty that the 
apostolic words were pictorial. 

In each of these five picture-words man stands 
before God—each time in a different guise before the 
same God: first as an accused person, secondly as an 
enemy, thirdly as a debtor, fourthly and fifthly as a 
slave. He stands there before God, but he is separated 
from God by a terrible barrier: by sin, the flesh, the 
world, the law. ‘Transferred into the position ‘in 
Christ’ he experiences the setting aside of this barrier 
and finds access to God. And in accordance with the 
particular picture which Paul uses, this access to God 
in Christ is called acquittal, or reconciliation, or remis- 
sion, or redemption, or adoption. Paul, the architect,’ 
did not plan five or more doors side by side, or one after 
the other into the royal palace of grace, but one single 
open door. But he had many different sketches of the 
janua vite—the doorway to life—in his mind. 


As an accused person? man stands before God’s 
judgment seat as part of the mighty complex of religious 
imagery which surrounds the fundamental word justifi- 
cation. This imagery has its psychological starting- 
point in the old Jewish and old apostolic expectation of 
judgment at the last day. In Christ this accused 
person becomes unaccused;* he is awarded not con- 
demnation * but liberty.’ ‘Acquittal’ is the meaning of 


*I Cor. iii. 10, és codds RPL: 
* Rom. viii. 33, ris éyxadéoes card éxAextOv Oeod. 
dior, 11.5 -*Colia wae! dvEyKAITOUS: 
4 Rom. viii. 1, otde & pe viv KaTdKpia Tots év Xpiora Thats 
°6 yap vopos Tod mvedpatos THs Cons év XpicrG "Incod jrevepwcey oe | 
a0 TOD Vopov THS dpaptias Kal Tod Gavdrov. 


PAUL THE CHRISTIAN 169 


the Pauline justification.’ And the acquittal experi- 
enced ‘in Christ’ coincides with justification ‘out of 
faith,’’ ‘through faith’* or ‘by faith, * because faith is 
indeed union with Christ,° and is only realised ‘in 
Christ.’ 

Paul’s justification ‘out of’ faith or ‘through’ faith 
or ‘by’ faith has often been misunderstood and to-day is 
still often misunderstood by uneducated Protestantism 
in something like this form: justification is reckoned as | 
the reward given by God to man’s achievement of faith. — 
Paul himself perhaps gave occasion for this misunder- | 
standing by his strong emphasis, especially in the fourth 
chapter of Romans, upon the phrase in the Septuagint ° 
about Abraham’s faith.’ 

In this quotation 


His faith was reckoned 


the word ‘reckoned’ * lends support to that mechanical 
interpretation. 

But we must not isolate this passage, and we cannot 
look upon ‘reckon’ as the characteristic word to use 
in connection with justification. Paul employs (the 
thoroughly unpauline) word ‘reckon’ under compulsion 
of the terms of his quotation. When due regard is paid 
to the whole'of his confessions about faith and righteous- 
ness, it must be said: faith, as he uses the term, is not 
action, but reaction, not human achievement before God, 
but divine influence upon man in Christ, and justification 
‘out of’ faith or ‘through’ faith is really justification 

1Gal. ii, 17; Phil. iii. 9; 2 Cor. v. 21; Rom. iii. 24; viii. 33. 

2Gal. ii. 16; iii. 8, 24; v. 5; Rom. iii. 26, 30; v. 1; ix. 10; x. 6. 

SP ON SI 0: 4 Rom. iii. 22, 28, 30. 

5 Cf. above, p. 161 ff. 

6LXX, Gen. xy. 6 (in the form in which Paul quotes), émicrevoe 
St "A Bpadm 7d Ged kat eAoyicby atte eis duxacoovvyv. 

7Rom. iy. 8f.; 9f.; 22 ff Cf. also Gal. iii. 6. 

8 €hoyioOy. 


170 PAUL 


‘in’ faith,’ justification ‘in Christ,’* justification ‘in the 
name of Jesus Christ,’* justification ‘in the blood of 
Christ.’* Faith is not the pre-condition of justification, 
it is the experience of justification. 

Being justified in Christ the believer possesses - 
the ‘righteousness of God’ in Christ.° This frequent 
technical expression,’ once replaced and explained by 
the phrase ‘righteousness from God,’’ is used by Paul 
of the normal condition conferred upon us in Christ by 
the grace of God. But that this is nothing in the 
nature of a magical transformation is shown by the 
passage* which speaks of a ‘waiting for’ the desired 
righteousness: Before all men lies the last judgment, 
which at length will bring definitive justification. The 
justified man is therefore not a completely righteous 
man: he still has a goal of righteousness before him.’ 
In the apostle’s thoughts on justification, as elsewhere, 
we see the peculiar dynamical tension between the 
consciousness of present possession and the expectation 
of future full possession. 


As an enemy’ man stands before God in the second 
group of metaphors, which surrounds the idea of 


1 The formula ‘in faith’ (éy [77] aioret) is used frequently by Paul, 
Gal. ii. 20; 1 Cor. xvi. 13; Col. ii. 7; 2 Cor. xiii. 5, and even more 
frequently in the Pastoral Epistles. That it is not united with 
‘justification’ in the Epistles is, so far as I can see, an accident. 
The contrasting formula ‘in the law’ (év véuw) is so united in Gal. iii. 
11; v. 4. 

2Gal. iii. 17. TLiConiyn ol. 

*Rom. v. 9. (Cf. below, Chap. VIII.) z 

°2 Cor. v. 21, ducaoovvyn Oeod év aire. 

62 Cor. v. 21; Rom. i. 17 (not iii. 5); iii. 21, 22, 25, 26; x. 3. 

7 Phil. ili. 9, tiv éx Oeod Stxarootrny. 

SGal. v. 5, jets yap mvedmare éx miatews Amida Suxavocvvys emreKdexXo- 
pea. 

* Mysticism and eschatology in Paul! 

10 Col. i. 21; Rom. v. 10, éxOpo/; cf. Rom. viii. 7, Opa eis Oedv. 


PAUL THE CHRISTIAN 171 


reconciliation. In the marriage problem, as treated by' 
Paul, which contemplates the separation and reconcilia- 
tion of husband and wife,! we have a human example to 
help us to understand this figure. As an enemy man is 
estranged from God and separated from Him.’ Through 
Christ we are again reconciled to God.* It is not to be 
thought that God is reconciled, but it is God* who in 
Christ brings peace to us, transforming enemies into 
reconciled persons. Therefore we have ‘ through Christ 
peace and communion with God’® or ‘in Christ the 
peace of God’® or summing up the whole matter :' 


Christ is our peace. 


It is quite clear that the ‘concept’ of reconciliation 
which has often been so strongly developed into dogma 
completely coincides in Paul’s usage with the undogmatic 
thought of ‘ peace.’ ® 


As a debtor® man stands before God in the third set 
of metaphors, in which the Apostle by use of the word 
forgiveness clearly links on to the original Gospel’s © 
estimate of sin as a debt. In Christ the debtor ex- 
periences the remission of his debt." For in His grace 
God presents us in Christ the amount of the debt 


PirOor vil. tT; 

2 Col. i, 21, darAAorpwpévors; Eph. ii. 18, of rote ovres paKpay. 
3 Cor. v. 18 ff. ; Rom. v. 10. 

4Col. i. 20; 2 Cor. v. 18. 


5 Rom. v. 1, eipyvyv exomev mpods Tov Gedy did Tod Kupiov Nav "Inoov 


Xpirrov. 
6 Phil. iv. 7, 9 eipjvn tod Geod . . . ev Xpiorg; cf. John xyi. 33, 
‘in me... peace.’ 


7 Eph. ii. 14, airs yap eorw 7) eipyvnnpov. 

8 Cf. especially Rom. v. 1. compared with v. 11. 

9 Of. Col. ii. 14, 7d Kad’ Fav xetpsypador. 

10 Matt. vi. 12; Lk. xi. 4. 

1 Col. i. 14, év b éyouev . . . THY ageow Tov apaprioy ; Hph. i. 7, €v 


3 ae 4 a / 
® éxouev . . . THY ddeow TOV TapaTTHpaTov. 


172 PAUL 


incurred through our trespasses.' ‘ Remission,’ that is 
the meaning of the word ‘forgiveness,’ and I do not 
believe that there is a great difference between the two 
Greek words that Paul used here.” Anyone who has 
seen one of the numerous records of debt on the papyri 
that have been discovered, will realise that the meta- 
phor, which Paul carries out so strikingly of the bond 
nailed to the cross, after being first blotted out and so 
cancelled,® was especially popular in its appeal. 


And now comes the important series of metaphors, 
obviously valued and loved above the others by the 
Apostle, which gathers round the word ‘redemption.’ 
Probably it is the most frequently misunderstood ; but 
when it is looked at in its connection with the civilisation 
of the surrounding world of Paul’s day there is no 
mistaking its comforting simplicity and force. While 
for us this circle of metaphors is not immediately 
‘understandable, to the Christians of ancient days, 
amongst whom there were certainly many slaves, it 
presented no difficulty because it was closely connected 
with slavery, the common social institution of the ancient 
world. Here man stands as slave before God, and 
there are various powers who in Paul’s thought figure 
as the ‘masters’ of the unfree man: Sin,‘ the law,’ 
idols,” men,’ death (corruption).* In Christ the slave 
receives freedom.’ This liberation of slaves in Christ ’° 
is suggested in the word redemption." Just as justifica- 

1 Col. ii. 13, yaprodpevos qpiv mdvra Ti TapanTépara. 

* ddeous, Col. i. 14; Eph. i. 7; and wdépeous, Rom. iii, 25. 

® Col. ii. 14. Cf. Licht vom Osten, 4th Ed., p. 282 f. 

* Rom. vi. 6, 17, 19, 20; Tit. iii. 3. * Galiiy. l-7saysel 

6 Gal. iv. 8, 9. 7 1 Cor. vii: 23; 8 Rom. viii. 21. 

°Gal. it, 4, tiv eXevOepiav yay qv exopev év Xprotd ‘Iyood; cf. Gal. 
v. 1; John viii, 36. 

10 Col. i. 14; Eph. i. 7; Rom. iii, 24. 

4 dmohitpwors, Col. i. 14; Eph. i. 7,14; iv. 80; 1 Cor. i. 30; Rom. 
ill, 24; viii, 23. 


PAUL THE CHRISTIAN 173 


tion is the acquittal of the accused, so redemption is the 
emancipation of the slave. It is not improbable that 
Paul had in mind a saying of Jesus,’ to which he also 
probably alludes elsewhere :? 


The Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve [as a 
slave] and to give His life a ransom for many [slaves]. 


The greatest impetus to the development of the 
circle of metaphors of redemption came from the custom 
of sacral manumission, widespread in the ancient world 
(and continued also amongst Hellenistic Jews and even 
amongst Christians), with which we have now again 
become acquainted, chiefly thanks to inscriptions. 
Amongst the various legal forms under which in the 
time of Paul the manumission of a slave could be 
effected, we find the solemn ritual purchase of the slave 
by a deity. The owner comes with the slave to the 
temple, sells him there to the god, and receives from 
the temple treasury the purchase money which the slave 
has before paid in out of his savings. By this means 
the slave becomes the property of the god, but as 
against men he is free. 

From this point of view the -words which occur twice 
in first Corinthians : + 


Ye were bought with a price, 


and the sentence in Galatians*® about Christ redeeming 
them that were under the law, become vividly intelli- 
gible, especially when we see that Paul uses the regular 


1 Mark x. 45 = Matt. xx. 28, cal yap 6 vids rod dvOpcrov otk #dOev 
duaxovnOjvat, GAA diaxovncar Kal Sodvar THv Wuynv aitod Avrpov dyti 
TroANOv. 

2 Phil. ii. 7, poppiv dovAov AaBav, ‘He took the form of a slave.’ 

3 For full references see Licht vom Osten, 4th Ed., p. 271 f. 

41 Cor. vi. 20; vii. 23, tints AyoptcOnre. Hans Lietzmann, 
Handbuch zum N.T.,9, 2nd Hd. (Titbingen, 1923), p. 28, translates 
Tysns appropriately by ‘ spot cash’ [German ‘bar’]. 

° Gal. iv. 5, va tods 7d vopov eLayopdacy ; cf. iii. 18. 


174 PAUL 


formula which occurs in inscriptions relating to manu- 
missions, and that amongst the people to whom Paul 
wrote there were slaves who would naturally know all 
about that particular form of law. Freed through 
Christ (or ‘in’! Christ, as ‘in’ the temple of the god) 
those who have hitherto been slaves of sin, slaves of 
the law, etc., are now slaves of Christ,’ Christ’s property,’ 
the body of Christ,* but otherwise free men,’ who must 
not again be made slaves.° | 

The same contrast between present possession and 
future full possession, which we found in the Apostle’s 
assurance of justification,’ can also be observed in his 
idea of redemption: those who are already redeemed 
still ‘wait’ for the ‘redemption of the body,’ * the ‘day 
of redemption’ still lies before them.’ 


Instead of slaves we become free men in Christ. 
How little Paul binds himself dogmatically with this 
metaphor is shown by the fact that he occasionally em- 
ploys the figure of a slave in making another contrast ; 
instead of slaves we become in Christ sons of God.” 
This contrast is carried out by Paul through the use of 
the ancient legal concept of adoption. Numerous in- 
scriptions and also papyri have enabled us not only to 
illustrate the word Paul here uses," but have also taught 


1 Gal ii. 4. *Gal. i. 10; Eph. vi. 6, ete. 

8 Gal, in. 29; vy. 24; 1 Cor. 1.12; ii. 23; xy. 235 2 Corixeg, 

*1 Cor. xi. 27, etc., the words céua has a double meaning and 
indicates both ‘body’ and ‘slave.’ 

' Galryalsylo. 6 Gal. 17.4; v. 1; 1 Cor. vii. 238. 

7 Above, p. 170. 

8 Rom. vill. 23, qets Kal atrol év éavtois orevalopev viobeciav azex- 
dexopmevol, THY AmrohUTpWOLY TOD GHmaTOS MOV. 

°Hiph. iv. 30, eis nuépav dzrodAutpocews. 

10 yiot Geod, Gal. iv. 5 f.; iii. 26; Rom. viii. 14. 

11 yiobecia = adoption (Luther uses sonship), Gal. iv.5; Eph. i. 5 
Rom. vill. 15, 23. + Quotations from ancient sources in Neue Bibel- 
studien, p. 66 £. (Bible Studies, p. 239). 


PAUL THE CHRISTIAN 175 


us how frequent adoption was in the Hellenistic world 
of those days, and how readily understood by the people 
the Apostle’s metaphor must have been. This is 
especially true of a thought which is entitled to a place 
in this circle of metaphors, and which Paul found in the 
Septuagint’ and in the words of Jesus,’ that God has 
drawn up a ‘testament’*® in our favour, and that we 
therefore are to expect an ‘inheritance’ : * 


And if children, 

Then heirs ; 

Heirs of God, 

And joint-heirs with Christ.° 


How clear and comforting must these words and 
others like them :° 


Thou art no longer a slave but a son; 
And if a son, then an heir through God, 


have sounded in the heart of a man of antiquity, who, 
without explanation, understood that the adopted son 
was also the heir.’ 

But this whole series of ideas is not made dogmati- 
cally rigid: the adoption through God, which we have 


1 Very frequent. 

2Cf. particularly the words at the Last Supper in the light of 
Lk. xxii. 29. 

3 Siabn«y, Gal. iii. 15 ff. ; iv. 24; 1 Cor. xi. 25; 2 Cor. ili. 6. 

4 kAnpovouia, Gal. iii. 18; iv. 1 ff; Col. 11. 24; Eph. i. 14,18; v. 5, 
etc. 

‘Rom. viii. 17, ¢i d€ réxva, kal kAnpovopor* KAnpovopor pev Oeodt, ovy- 
KAnpovopmor d€ Xpirorov. 

6 Gal. iv. 7, dare ovKére ef SodAOs, GAAG vids+ «<i d€ vids, Kal KANpOVvojos 
dua Peod. 

7 On adoption by testament with simultaneous appointment as heir 
ef. F. Schulin, Das griechische Testament verglichen mit dem rémischen, 
a programme, Basel, 1882, especially p. 15 ff. and 52; Ernst Lohmeyer, 
Diatheke, Leipzig, 1913, p. 11 ff., especially 29, 142; for later times, 
Giannino Ferrari, Formulari Notarili inediti dell’ Hid Bizantina, 
Rome, 1912, p. 42. ; 


176 PAUL 


experienced in Christ,’ still remains the object of our 
‘expectation,’* and of our ‘inheritance’ we possess 
through the Holy Spirit at present only ‘earnest 
money. * 


That all these ‘concepts’ of justification, reconcilia- 
tion, forgiveness, redemption, adoption are not distin- 
guishable from one another like the acts of a drama, 
but are synonymous forms of expression for one single 
thing, is proved by a peculiarity which occurs repeatedly 
in Paul’s letters—a mark of the holy warmth of their 
enthusiasm. The Apostle is fond of adding one con- 
ception to another, so as to explain the one by the 
other: adoption stands side by side with redemption,‘ _ 
similarly justification ° and forgiveness are explained by 
redemption,® or justification by forgiveness.’ Illegiti- 
mate catachreses from the rhetorical point of view, 
these pilings up of mixed metaphors were no doubt, 
judged from the standpoint of the popular preacher, 
very effective. Jn any case Paul’s churches did not 
dogmatically vivisect confessions like this sentence in 
first Corinthians °: 


But of Him are ye in Christ Jesus, 
Who was made unto us wisdom from God, 
And righteousness and sanctification and redemption— 


but entered into the feeling expressed in them as into 
the exultation of a psalmist. 
It is furthermore remarkable, that all five of the 


1 Rom. viii. 15 ff, eAdBere avetua viobecias, év & xpalopev: "ABBE 6 
TATHp. 

2 Rom. vill. 23, viobeciav drrexdeydpevor. 

° Kiph. i. 14, ds éorw dppaBov tis KAnpovopias. 

4 Gal. iv. 5; Rom. viii. 23. 5 Rom. ili. 24. 

C'Coliiw la een rate 7 Rom. iy. 6-8. 

81 Cor. i. 80, é& airod Se tpels eort &v Xpiot@ “Iynood, os éyevnbn 
copia Huty dard Geod Oixarootvy Te Kal dylagpos Kal amroAUTpwots, 


PAUL THE CHRISTIAN 177 


groups of metaphors just mentioned are taken from the 
practice of law. We have other proof that Paul was 
fond of legal metaphors? which would present itself 
especially easily to the city-dweller, and would be well 
understood by his churches. 


We shall not comprehend Paul until we have heard 
all these various testimonies concerning salvation sound- 
ing together in harmony like the notes of a single full 
chord.2. Once accused before God, an enemy of God, a 
debtor, a slave—now in Christ acquitted and redeemed, 
free from debt, the friend of God and the son of God— 
the man who makes this confession testifies that in 
Christ he is no longer ‘far off’ from God but has come 
‘near’ to God.? To raise scholastically pointed ques- 
tions, which the controversial theology of exegesis finds 
indispensible, such as: ‘What is the relation of justifi- 
cation to reconciliation in Paul? or of forgiveness to 
redemption?’ is to break the strings of the harp and to 
twist them into a tangle that it is hopeless to unravel. 
Such questions have surely no more value than if we 
were to ask, what is the relation of an accused person 
to an enemy or of a debtor to a slave, and while they 


1Cf. p. 71, above. 
2The idea often hinted at in these pages that certain passages 
from Paul’s letters ought to be read (or listened to) like verses from 
the Psalms, is no modern invention. Codex 108 of the Moscow 
Synodal-Library, which was written in the year 993, has on page 
4v the verse | 
pvOwle, Haddc, tiv xpvrdotopov Avpay 
Wuxds pedwdhpace moTav Hovvewv, 
(Tune, Paul, thy golden mouthed lyre 
To sweeten with its song the souls of the faithful.) ° 


Cf. Exempla Codicum Grecorum, vol. i, Codices Mosquenses, edd. 
G. Cereteli et S. Sobolevski Mosque, 1911, p. 8. 

3Hiph. ii, 13, veri 88 ev Xpiore "Inood tpels ov mote OVTES paKpav 
éyeriOnre eyyds &v TH aipare Tov Xpicrodv. (On the last formuia see 
below, Chapter VIII.). if 


178 PAUL 


may, perhaps, furnish matter for pamphlets and make 
examination candidates uneasy, they are no help to- 
wards understanding Paul. 


It is more profitable to search in Paul himself for 
utterances in which the harmony of that chord is com- 
pleted. There can scarcely be found a finer line than 
the shout of triumph in second Corinthians :' 


If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature. 


That is the second chapter of the Pauline Genesis, 
upon the first page of which was written the flash of 
light at Damascus.? Living in Christ, Paul divides his 
life into two great periods,’ that of the old Paul and 
that of the new created Paul. The ‘old man’* had 
languished in the dark prison’ enclosed by the many 
walls of the seven spheres of evil, ‘in’ the flesh,® ‘in’ 
sins,’ ‘in’ Adam,°® ‘in’ his overhanging fate of death,’ 
‘in’ the Law,” ‘in’ the world," ‘in’ sufferings.” The 
‘new man’ lives and works ‘in’ Christ within the 
sphere of light and holiness,“ into which all those dark 
terrors cannot reach : 


Light shall shine out of darkness ! 
The old things are passed away 
Behold they are become new.' 


12 Cor. v. 17, ef tus €v Xpiord, xawi «rics; cf. Gal. vi. 15. 
22 Cor. iv. 6; cf. above, p. 180. $2 Cor. v.17. 

* Eph. iv. 22; Rom. vi. 6, 6 wadads (j0v) dvOpwzos. 

°Cf. Gal. iii. 23; Rom. vii. 6, 23. 6 Rom. vii. 5; viii. 8, 9. 
1A) Cor. xy; 17, 81 Cor. xv. 22. 
*shomitv, 2b Gctl alesis 

10Gal. v. 4; Rom. iii. 19; ii. 12. 

Erp. i112, 129 Cor. vi. 4. 

3 Col. iii, 10, tov véov (dvOpwrrov). 

“Cf. the diagram below in the Appendix. 

192 Cor. iv. 6. 


© 2 Cor. v. 17, ra épxaia mappdOev + idod yéyovev Kawa. 


PAUL THE CHRISTIAN 179 


The jlesh has no power over the new man because 
as one who belongs to Christ he has ‘ crucified’ it,’ 

As a new creature, Paul, the Christian, is also free 
from sin.2 He has been loosed from sin. But is he 
also sinless, is he incapable of sinning? Paul might 
certainly in theory subscribe to the statement that the 
Christian does not sin.* But the awful experiences of 
practice would give him cause to doubt. Paul in his 
cure of souls retained a sober judgment; freedom from 
sin is not thought of mechanically and magically. Side 
by side with his numberless moral exhortations to 
Christians to battle against sin, there are confessions 
of Paul the Christian himself,‘ testimonies that even 
one who has experienced the new creation still knows 
at times the old deep sense of sin. But he has also 
daily renewed visitations of the grace of God, and daily 
anew he experiences in the new creation the trans- 
forming influence of this grace. 

The new Paul is also rid of the fellowship with 
Adam which is a fellowship with death.’ No longer is 
he ‘in’ Adam, but ‘in’ Christ, and ‘in’ Him no longer 
‘in’ death but ‘in’ life,° he has the guarantee that 
death has been overcome.’ 

But Paul, the Christian, is also a new creature, 
because in Christ he is free from the Law ; 


Christ is the end of the Law.? 


The ‘letter’ has been conquered by the ‘Spirit.’° The 
problem of the Law was to the former Pharisee an 


1Gal. v. 24, of S& rod Xpicrod rv cdpxa éoravpwcay. 


2 Rom. vi. 1-14. 3 Rom. vi. 2, 6, 11. 
4 Hspecially Rom. vii. 
51 Cor. xv. 22; Rom. v. 12 ff. 6 Rom. v. 10, 17. 


71 Cor. xv. 22, dcmep yap év TO’ Adam évtes amroOvncKovaW, otTws 
Kal év TO Xpiotd rdvtes CworroOyoovrat. 

8 Rom. x. 4, réAos yap vduov Xpioros. 

9 Rom. vii. 6; 2 Cor. iii. 6. 


ir 


180 PAUL 


especially tormenting one, and it occupies a great space 
in the letters owing to Paul’s polemical position in 
regard to the Judaisers. Its practical point was cer- 
tainly for him, as for the churches whom agitators had 
disturbed, the problem of circumcision, and however 
easy this might be to solve theoretically, as a problem 
concerning ritual and cult it was peculiarly delicate 
and painful. But the problem of the Law was not 
solved by one single sufficient formula; Paul, the 
Benjamite, remained a pious Bible Christian and could 
himself quote the words of the Law as authoritative.’ 
The treasured Bible of the Fathers and distant ancestors 
with its Thora, Psalter and Prophets, was too deeply 
rooted as a part of his religious inheritance in his heart 
from childhood onwards, and had no doubt gained too 
firm a place in Apostolical Cultus, through the natural 
adoption by the earliest Christian congregation of the 
Bible-reading as practised by their fathers for genera- 
tions, to allow the opponent of the Law to develop into 
the destroyer of the Law. Though often a harsh® op- 
ponent of the Law, he seeks rather to preserve for it a 
part of its value.* Freedom from the slavery of the 
Law is thus in no sense thought of as libertinism ;° 
Like Jesus Himself,’ Paul proclaimed the words of the 
Law regarding love to one’s neighbour as the quint- 
essence of the Law.’ 


1 Cf. above, pp. 96-97. In all questions in dispute concerning 
the history of religion (even in those which appear only theoretical) we 
ought first to ask, if we desire to grasp their real profundity, how far 
they directly or indirectly affect the cult. It is through their de- 
pendence on the cult that they in most cases first receive their pointed- 
ness and passionate explosiveness. 

2 See above, p. LOL. 

’The strongest instance is probably his polemic against Moses, 
2 Cor. iii. 18 ff. 

* Cf. especially Gal. iii. 21 ff. 

*Gal. v. 18, pdvov py tHv édXevOepiay cis dhopyjv TH wapKi. 

6 Matt. xxii. 39 and parallels. Gal. v.14; Rom. xiii. 8, 


PAUL THE CHRISTIAN 181 


How high the new Paul felt himself to be raised 
above the world and its satanic-demonic powers is 
shown by many powerful words, which derive their 
force from being combined with Christ. The mightiest 
song of triumph is surely that in the letter to the 
Romans :* 


Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? 

Shall tribulation, or anguish, or persecution ? 

Or famine, or nakedness ? 

Or peril, or sword ? 

Even as it is written: 

‘For thy sake we are killed all the day long, 

‘We are accounted as sheep for the slaughter.’ 

Nay in all these things we are more than conquerors 
, Through Him that loved us. 


For I am persuaded, 

That neither death, nor life, 

Nor angels, nor principalities, 

Nor things present, nor things to come, 

Nor powers, nor height, nor depth, 

Nor any other creature 

Shall be able to separate us from the love of God, 
Which is in Christ Jesus, 

Our Lord. 


Finally there is one characteristically Pauline con- 
viction, little regarded by the doctrinaire students who 
are more interested in the theories of Primitive Christi- 
anity than in its psychic forces, namely, the conviction 
of being in Christ raised especially above sufering. 
Paul has here given form to one of the profoundest 


1Rom. viii. 35-39, ris ypas ywpioe amd THs ayamys TOD XpioTod ; 
4, 70 , \ / vA \ n / va , b)) , 
Oris ) oTevoxwpla 7) Swwypds; 7) Ads 7) yumvoTys ; 7 KivdvvOsi7) paXaLpa. 5 
(kabas yéypamras, ore evexev ov Gavatovpcba ANY TV HLEpay, eAoyicbnwev 
f4 4, “A 3 a9 , “A ¢ A 8 \ ~ 3 / 
ds mpoBata chayns.) aA’ ev TovTOIS TATW VITEpVLKMpLEV OLA TOV ayarTry)- 
TAVTOS Has. TWémTEopar Yap étt ovte Odvaros ovte Lun ovTe ayyeAor ovTE 
> \ A > nm » ¢ / y+ / » 4 ¥ , 
Gpxal ovre évertara ovTe peAAovTa ovTE duvdpers ovTe Vywua ovTE Bados 
ovre Tis KTiois ETépa SuVnTETAL NGS xXwpioat amd THS ayamns TOD Jeov THs ev 
oe? “A n sf e a 

Xpict@ “Incov TO kupiw ymov. 


182 PAUL 


conceptions that we owe to him:* since he suffers in 
Christ, his sufferings are to him the ‘ sufferings of Christ,’ ? 
or the ‘affiictions of Christ.’* It is not the old Paul 
who suffers, but the new Paul, who is a member of the 
Body of Christ, and who therefore mystically experi- 
ences all that that Body experienced and experiences : 
he ‘ suffers with Christ,’ * is ‘ crucified with Christ,’ ° ‘has 
died with Christ,’° ‘been buried,’’ ‘raised up,’® and 
‘lives® with Christ.’ Thus suffering is no anomaly in 
Paul’s life, but as the ‘sufferings of Christ’ a normal 
part of his state as a Christian; and a certain fixed 
measure of ‘afflictions of Christ’ must according to 
God’s plan be ‘filled up’ by Paul.” 

In this Pauline passion-mysticism it is easy to re- 
cognise what I have called the undogmatic element in 
Paul. Dogmatic exegesis, which tortures itself over 
the problem of interpreting such passages and takes 
away from them their original simplicity by introducing 
into them an artificially forced ‘as 7 were,’ cannot 
express in theological terms the intimacy of this 
mystical contemplation of the passion. But under 
the cross of Jesus a suffering man will be able even 
to-day to experience for himself the depth of meaning 
and the comfort implied by Paul’s ‘sufferings of 
Christ.’ Similarly the ancient Christians were able 
easily to understand the mystical meaning of the 


1 Cf. above, p. 163. On Paul’s mysticism of suffering there is good 
matter also in Mundle’s work (p. 77), mentioned above. 

4 Phil ii. 10); ba Cormeivo, 3 Col. i. 24, 

*Rom. viii. 17, cuprdcyoper. 

*Gal. ii. 20, Xpuord cvverrarpwopat. 

6 Rom. vi. 8, ameOavopev ovv Xpiord ; cf. Col. i1..20; iit. 355990 
Ties 

7 Rom. vi. 4, cvveradypev aird; cf. Col. ii, 12. 

§ Col. ii. 12, cuvnyépOnre; cf. iii. 8; Rom. vi. 4 f. 

° Rom. vi. 8, cwvéjoomev aird; ef. 2 Tim. i. 11. 

1 Col. i, 24, dvravamdnpd Ta torepypata tov Ordbewv Tod Xpucrod. 


PAUL THE CHRISTIAN 183 


several stages of baptism’ to the death, burial and 
resurrection with Christ, because having been baptised 
as adults, they had an indelibly vivid recollection of 
the ceremony performed upon them by immersion. It 
is by no means easy for us, brought up in the practice 
of infant baptism, to realise this vividness. The usages 
and sentiments attached to other cults of their environ- 
ment may have rendered the mystical interpretation of 
their sacrament easier. But that thorough investiga- 
tion of the Pauline passion-mysticism which is so 
urgently needed must give the whole problem its right 
place not only in the general history of religion,’ but 
also in the world-wide history of that Christian piety 
which centres upon the passion, a subject which cannot 
yet be properly comprehended by any of us, but whose 
memorials in written word and drama, in music and 
pictures often give us a wonderfully sympathetic inter- 
pretation of Paul’s profoundest meaning. 


1Col. ii. 12; Rom. vi. 3 ff. 

_ 2With this part of the problem cf. Johannes Leipoldt, Sterbende 
und auferstehende Gétter, Leipzig and Erlangen, 1923. Ancient 
material is unfortunately very fragmentary, and many of the frag- 
ments are lacking just at the crucial point. It appears to me, however, 
that a good deal of ancient passion-mysticism with a primitively 
popular appeal is to be found in the Hussain-cult of the Shi‘ites, which 
can be studied with comparative ease: Hd. Meyer, Ursprung und 
Anfénge des Christentwms, iii., p. 570 onwards, deals with this cult. 


ye a a | r) ’ 
ya ) yee 7, 
Sey. ee 
ae 7 a) 


‘ 


a a ’ ad oe WES Ns “Thi : a ie 4 





PAUL THE CHRISTIAN (Continued) 


Ps ale 
4 
vA 





CHAPTER VIII 
PAUL THE CHRISTIAN (Continued) 


THE DEVELOPMENT IN CONTEMPLATION OF THE ASSURANCE OF GOD 
AND CHRIST 


Paut in Christ, Christ in Paul! Paul is full of Christ, 
and no matter which of his confessions we have con- 
sidered we have found that it ultimately points to one 
and the same assurance of salvation, to his normal 
position with regard to God attained in fellowship with 
Christ. 

Here then would be the place in which, to speak in 
doctrinaire terms, Paul’s ‘Theology’ and ‘ Christology ’ 
in the narrower sense, that is his ‘doctrine’ of God and 
of Christ, should be discussed. It is more correct to 
speak of the development in contemplation of Paul’s 
convictions concerning God and Christ. 


Of his ideas of God Paul never attempts anything 
that could properly be called a doctrinal statement in 
the letters which have come down to us. ‘They 
certainly did not stand in the forefront of any passion- 
ate struggle, as did his assurance of Christ, because of 
its close connection with the problem of the Law. They 
stand rather in the background, majestically dominat- 
ing the scene, like the snow-capped peaks of the Taurus 
range overshadowing the Cilician plain. We can trace 
them more through the reflection of them in occasional 
utterances, in the harmonious expressions of contempla- 
tion and in words of prayer than in any great doctrinal 


exposition. But there is quite enough of this indirect 
(187) 


188 PAUL 


observation to give us an adequate impression. In this 
impression there is no indication of any absolutely new 
features. But Paul’s conviction of God had received a 
new brightness and a new intensity: in Christ it had 
become to him actual certainty, certainty in the fullest 
meaning of the word. Paul had found a new position 
with regard to God, not a new doctrine of God. 

The presuppositions of Paul’s thoughts of God are 
to be found in the piety of the Septuagint, in the other 
living elements of Jewish religion and in the revelations 
of God given by Jesus. Paul’s experience of God 
is especially closely related to the experience of 
God which Jesus had as it is reflected in the oldest 
traditions. That there is here no contrast between 
Jesus and Paul, receives outward illustration in the fact 
of cult-usage, that Paul took over into the Hellenistic 
world the Aramaic word Adda,' the old Jewish word for 
Father, which Jesus used as the opening word of 
prayer. 

There are two certainties pervading in equal 
measure the Gospel words of Jesus and the Pauline 
letters: God the majestic Lord of heaven and earth, 
the Holy One, whose demands upon us are infinite, and 
God, the loving Father who enfolds us with His mercy, 
helps us, and gladly gives His Grace, even to sinners. 
In one saying of Paul: ? 


The goodness of God leadeth thee to repentance, 


the two are united into the one tremendous certainty of 
the old Gospel: God is holy love. 


Here, however, at the centre of all piety there is a 
difference between Jesus and Paul, a difference not in 


1 Gal. iv. 6; Rom. viii. 15. Cf. the similar observation on Marana 
tha above, p. 127. 


* Rom. il, 4, rd ypnorov rod Oeod cis perdvordy oe ayet. 


PAULSTHE CHRISTIAN 189 


the idea of God, but in the independent energy of 
apprehending God and being apprehended by God. 
Jesus in His experience of God is self-supported : 

He needs no mediation : the Son ‘knoweth ’ the Father.* - 
Paul in his experience of God is not self-supported. As 
a pious Pharisee he used to stand upon the bridge of 
the Law, hoping with trembling steps to attain to God 
by aid of his own righteousness. But apart perhaps 
from rare moments of grace he remained far off from 
God. The moment near Damascus brought him near 
to God. Into his weak humanity there flowed the 
divine power of the living Christ, and through this 
Christ and in this Christ he received access.” Now he 
can really say ‘ Abba.’ ® 

I am persuaded : 

Nothing shall be able to separate us from the love of God, 


Which is in Christ Jesus, 
Our Lord. 


How great a total impression of His Lord, Christ 
Jesus, Paul had received, we have already seen.’ But 
springing out of fellowship with Christ, this great total 
impression is transformed into a multitude of separate 
assurances of Christ. The scattered reflections of these 
assurances in the letters have been used far too much as 
material for the Apostle’s ‘Christology’ and thus they 
have been transposed out of the sphere in which such 
beautiful and delicate forms of thought were originally 
alive and powerful, into the vacuum of purely Christo- 
logical conceptuality. They should rather be allowed 
to remain in their own sphere, within Christ-mysticism 
and Christolatry, thereby the more strongly to empha- 
sise the contemplative, edifying and practical character 
of all that the Apostle had to say Christologically. 

1Matt. xi, 27. 2 Hiph. iii. 12; Rom. v. 2. 


8 Gal. iv.6; Rom. vii. 15. 4Rom. vill. 38 f. 
5 Cf. above, p. 136. 


190 PAUL 


No doubt even before Damascus most of the 
elements, which later became constitutive for his 
‘Christology,’ were in existence. In particular, power- 
ful suggestions were given to him by the Septuagint 
and the traditional idea of the Messiah, by the 
testimonies of Jesus about Himself, which occur in the 
Gospel tradition, and the primitive apostolical cult- 
language, and beyond these by the religious ideas and 
metaphors of the non-Jewish world of his environment, 
both in the East and the West. 

In spite of all this it is not the fact that Paul put 
together a mosaic Christology out of the ancient cult- 
names and titles of honour, ‘Son of God,’ ‘Spirit of God,’ 
‘Image of God,’ ‘Anointed,’ and ‘Judge,’ ‘Man,’ ‘Root 
of Jesse,’ ‘Son of David,’ ‘Slave,’ ‘One that became 
poor,’ ‘Brother,’ ‘Crucified,’ ‘Lord,’* and ‘Saviour,’ etc., 
and that then on the foundation of this Christology the 
doctrines of justification, reconciliation, redemption, etc., 
were originated and developed by him. On the con- 
trary, being filled with Christ, daily growing more and 
more into Christ, Paul knew that he himself was justi- 
fied, reconciled, redeemed. And out of this assurance 
of salvation in Christ, which is fellowship with Christ 
and develops into the Christ-cult, there grew up an 
understanding in his contemplative soul of the mysteries 
that were hidden in the person of Christ. He whom 
Christ has apprehended can only try to express the 
meaning of these mysteries with the gleaming words of 
ancient cult language. Nor will it be otherwise at the 
present day. We must first in some way be taken 
possession of by Christ, then the Christology will come 
ofits own accord. Tantum Christus cognoscitur, quantum 
diligitur—‘ Christ is known, as much as He is loved.’ 


1On this point there is plentiful material, if not always correctly 
interpreted, in Werner Foerster’s Herr ist Jesus: Herkunft wnd 
Bedeutung des urchristlichen Kyrios-Bekenntnisses, Giitersloh, 1924. 


PAUL THE CHRISTIAN 191 


Christology is not the way to Christ, but the reflection 
of Christ. A merely intellectual Christology, which 
does not spring from a religious union with Christ, is 
of no value. But at the present day every religious 
Christology will in some form or other be Pauline. 

Pauline Christology, as it is called, is by no means 
mainly intellectual,’ rather it is contemplative, being 
most strongly inspired by the mystical experience of 
Christ and by the Christ-cult.2 Hence it comes about 
that Paul’s confessions of Christ taken all together do 
not give the impression of a system patched up out of 
the motley rags of tradition, but that, though they for 
the most part make use of old cult-words, they have 
rather the look of being Paul’s own creation, 


At the same time we may notice that in the forms 
of expression in which these confessions of Christ are 
conveyed anything specifically Jewish is generally 
rejected by Paul. The Apostle of the world gives us a 
picture of Christ which is world-wide, instinct with 
humanity throughout. The fact, so infinitely important 
to the Jewish Christian, that Jesus was the son of David 
is for Paul merely something external affecting the 
flesh.’ The Jewish Apocalyptic title ‘Son of Man’ 
never appears in his letters ; the brilliance of that star 
is eclipsed by the dawning splendour of the ‘Son of 
God.’* Similarly the Jewish title of Messiah falls into | 
the background; in many, even in most places, the | 
word ‘Christ’ has already become a proper name to | 
Paul.’ And that title of honour ‘Lord’ which Paul 


Peiow orale o,f. 

“Further on the essential nature of Paul’s contemplation above, 
p. 105 ff. 

3 Rom. i. 3 f. 4 Rom. i. 4 and many other places. 

* With this fact in the history of ideas compare my work (p. 31 ff.), 
cited above, p. 91, note 6. 


192 PAUL 


particularly loved to apply to Christ, though it was 
used by the primitive apostles before Paul, is yet at the 
same time world-wide ;' indeed it already carries with 
it a prophecy of the world-conflict of the Christ-cult and 
the Cesar-cult.2 It might be urged that ‘Lord’ as a 
title of dignity was indeed world-wide, but only in its 
ancient sense: Paul’s fundamental certitude that Christ 
is ‘the Spirit’ is formulated not only for all nations but 
for all times.’ 


Only in one single point of importance has the 
cosmopolitan Apostle’s spiritual picture of Christ 
preserved its native Jewish characteristics. Christ 
Jesus as the One who is to come, as the One who is 
coming to judgment, as the One who is coming for the 
fulfilment of the Kingdom of God, as the One to whom 
is addressed the prayer * Marana tha—this Christ Paul 
could not give up. So too the inseparable connection 
of the spiritual present Christ with the historical Jesus, 
and particularly the identity of the Living with the 
Crucified, saved Paul’s religious contemplation from 
dissipating itself in mythological vagueness.’ 

This Jewish, this historical backbone to the figure of 
the spiritual Christ was of great importance to the 
popular effect of Paul’s gospel. The religion of the 
people does not live on the stuffed specimens of the 
dogmatic compendiums, but on the many coloured world 
of wonders revealed to observation. 


The outlines of the Pauline Christ are perhaps 
most clearly recognisable in the second chapter of 


PRIUS iag f 
2Cf. especially the section ‘Christ and the Cesars,’ Licht vom 
Osten, 4th Ed., p. 287 ff. 
° Cf. above, p. 186 ff. and p. 155 f. 
1 Cor. xvi. 22. Cf. above, p. 127. 
‘Cf. above, p. 123 f. 


PAUL THE CHRISTIAN 193 


Philippians.!' In vigorous lines, but without any show 
of mythological phantasies, Paul, the prisoner, seeks to 
impress upon the souls of his simple converts the picture 
of his adored object. He who had lived eternally with 
the Father in divine spiritual glory did not strive to 
become equal with God. Instead of ascending a stage 
higher, He descended to a lower stage, came down to 
earth, became man and slave, humbled Himself, was 
obedient to the Father to death, even to death on the 
cross, and therefore was highly exalted by God to 
heavenly glory, where He lives as Lord of all created 
beings and rules to the glory of God: 


. . . Who being in the form of God, 

Counted not equality with God a prize to be grasped, 

But emptied Himself, 

Taking the form of a slave ;— 

Being made in the likeness of man and being found in fashion as a man, 
He humbled Himself, becoming obedient unto death, 

Yea, the death of the cross. 


Wherefore also God highly exalted Him, 
And gave Him the name which is above every name, 
That in the name of Jesus every knee should bow, 
Of things in heaven and things in earth and things under the earth, 
And that every tongue should confess 
That Jesus Christ is Lord 
To the glory of God the Father. 


These lines were not written in the hard tones of a 
theological thesis, they are not calculated for discussion 
by modern western Kenoticists, nor for fanatics lusting 


1 Phil. ii, 6-11, ds év pophy Ocotd trdpywv odx aprraypov yynoato TO 
nw \ / / 

elvat ica 6G, GAA Eavtov exévorey popPrv Sovrov haBdv, ey dpowpare 
dvOpdrrwv yevopevos Kal cyypats ebpebels ds avOpwros* érameivwoev EavTov 
/ ¢ / / / Q / be A 8 \ NPS \ 3 rN 
yevopevos imHKoos pexpt Oavarov, Oavdrov d€ gtavpod. dt0 Kal 6 Geds avrov 
: lal ‘\ “ “ 
breptwoer Kai éxapicato aitG 7d dvopa TO brép Tav Ovopa, va ev TH 
évépate Incod wav yovu kdpiyn érovpaviwv Kal érvyetwy Kal KataxOoviov Kad . 
cal lat 2 , ¢ 4 > A / > / A 
rica yaooa éfoporoyjoctar Ste Kvpios “Incods Xpucrds, cis dogav Geod 


TatTpos. 


13 


194 PAUL 


for formule to promote disunion. The words we have 
just heard have a soul of their own and that a very 
different one. They are a confession of the primitive 
apostolic cult, made by Paul, the prisoner, in order to 
rally his fellow-worshippers of Jesus Christ round the 
object of their cult, round a form divine and human and 
again divine. This Kyrios-confession can be understood 
only by the pious simplicity of silent devotion. Let us 
leave all our commentaries on one side and ask an 
Anatolian Christian to read us the original text of this 
confession in the soft tones and psalm-like rhythm with 
which the Christian East is accustomed to hear portions 
of the Greek Bible read in the twilight gloom of the 
churches,' then a part of the undertones of the old 
psalm becomes life-like again, we are freed from our 
pitiful dependence on history, and we come into contact 
in worship with the poor saints of Macedonia, who were 
the first possessors of the treasure. 

In second Corinthians’ the confession is simpler, 
but marked by the same essential lines :— 


Though He was rich, yet for your sakes He became poor, 
That ye through His poverty might become rich. 


The eternity of Christ in the past—in doctrinaire 
terms the pre-existence of Christ—is therefore abso- 
lutely beyond question to the Apostle. This certainty, 


‘ Roland Schiitz, who has a particularly delicate understanding of 
these things, made a successful experiment of this kind, cf. Z.N.T.W., 
21 (1922), p. 183: ‘I remember in a service at the modern Greek 
Church in Berlin (conducted by the Archimandrite Mawrokordatos) to 
have heard scarcely a word that sounded like prose. All the texts 
were recited to music, though one could not call the sound pure sing- 
ing. They ran on in a swift even flow of sound. We can think of 
the liturgical worship of the earliest Greek Christians as similar. 
Through the melodious tone of recital they were removed from the 
prose of the koiné, without the liturgy having to become elaborate.’ 

*2 Cor. viii. 9, . . . érrwyevoevy trovVows dv, iva tpeis TH éxelvov 


/ 4 
TTwXELa TAOUYATYTE. 


PAUL THE CHRISTIAN 195 


however, is only the result of a simple contemplative 
inference backwards from the fact of the spiritual glory 
of the present Christ: the Spirit (pneuma) must be and 
must always have been eternal. The inference is 
rendered easier by the old Bible sayings about the 
Spirit’ and by inherited Jewish teaching concerning the 
eternity of the most important messengers of revelation. 
The expression is quite Pauline when later on the 
second Epistle of Clement’? tells us that Christ the Lord 
who saved us, was first spirit and then became flesh ; 
and the celebrated lines of the prologue of John’s 
Gospel*® concerning the eternity and incarnation of the 
Word, though somewhat differently formulated, are 
similarly as regards content thoroughly Pauline. 

All further testimonies to the pre-existent Christ 
spring from this certainty, especially the statements 
that He took part in the creation of the world,* and 
that He was present with the fathers in the wilderness 
in the form of the spiritual Rock.’ 


The earthly life of Jesus, then, was appreciated by 
Paul, at least in the letters that have come down to us, 
more for its character as a whole, than for its details.° 
True, even in his letters a considerable number of 
details are referred to: the Davidic descent of Jesus’ 
and the fact that he was born as a Jew under the law.$ 
Paul himself was acquainted with his brother, James,’ 
and the Apostle’s celebrated prayer to Christ, thrice 


1H.g. UXX, Gen. i. 2; Job xxniii. 4. 

29 Clem. ix., Xpiatds 6 Kvpios 6 cwoas Has Ov pev TO TPATOV TVETWA 
éyeveTo odpé. 

3 John i. 1,14. On the incarnation, cf. Rom. viii. 3. 

41 Cor. viii. 6; Col. i. 15 ff. 51 Cor. x. 4. 

6On this whole question cf. especially P. Olaf Moe, Paulus und die 
evangelische Geschichte, Leipzig, 1912. 

7 Rom. i. 3; 2 Tim. ii. 8. 

8 Gal. iv. 4. 9Gal.i. 19; ii. 9. 


196 PAUL 


repeated, for the removal of the ‘thorn in the flesh °* 
presupposes a knowledge of the abundant Gospel 
tradition concerning the powers of healing possessed 
by Jesus. Paul, moreover, mentions the night of the 
betrayal,? and the Last Supper,’ along with an exact 
quotation of the words of Jesus on that occasion.‘ 
Other words of Jesus are also quoted as unimpeachable 
authority. The martyr-confession ‘before Pontius 
Pilate,’ ° the sufferings of Jesus,’ the death on the cross,° 
and the burial’ are of course familiar. One thing is 
particularly noticeable: Paul not only knows that the 
death of Jesus was brought about by a conflict with the 
authorities,’® but he also, no doubt under the influence 
of reports of what occurred at Gethsemane, regards it 
as a proof of the obedience of Jesus to the Father.” 
That Paul is influenced generally by the tradition of 
the words of Jesus, even when he does not expressly 
quote them, is shown by the moral exhortations of his 
letters, and by other silent adaptations of sayings of 
Jesus.” 

In his oral mission preaching “ the Apostle no doubt 


D2 Cor -xil ou. 41. Cori xi 23, 

$1 Cor. xi. 23 ff. 41 Cor. xi. 24 ff. 

51 Thess. iv. 15; 1 Cor. vii. 10; ix. 14; Acts xx. 35; 1 Tim. v. 18. 

Ce Timat pyre: 

7 Cf. the passages referred to above, pp. 164, 181 ff, on the ‘ suffer- 
ings of Christ,’ which no doubt apply to the sufferings of Paul, but are 
only to be understood because Christ Himself had also suffered. 

§ Numerous passages. 

91 Cor. xv. 4; Rom. vi. 4. 101 Cor, ii. 8. 

1 Phil, ii. 8, yevouevos tarynxoos péxpt Gavarov, Oavatov dé cravpod; cf. 
above, p. 67 f. 

4 Gali y. 14; 1 Cory vi. 7: Romy xi-el eee Levee 

131 Thess, v. 2 f.; 1 Cor. xiii. 9; 2 Cor. 1. 17 f£.; Gal. iv. 6; Rom: 
viii. 15. 

4It is generally overlooked, often under the indirect influence of 
the theory of mechanical inspiration, that Paul’s letters, regarded as a 
source for his teaching, are only fragments of Paul, that their testi- 
monium é silentio must therefore be used only with caution. We 


PAUL THE CHRISTIAN 197 


made a still more ample use of the words of Jesus than 
was necessary in letters directed to Christians. Paul 
can assume a certain acquaintance with the sayings of 
Jesus in his churches.’ And even that total impression 
that Paul had of the earthly life of Jesus as one of 
humiliation, poverty and slavery’ is itself dominated by 
the Gospel tradition.* How greatly this ‘poor’ man 
Jesus must have gripped the souls of the insignificant 
many, is shown by the success of Paul’s missionary 
labours. 


At the commanding centre, however, of Paul’s con- 
templation of Christ stands the Living One, who is also 
the Crucified, or the Crucified who is also alive. The 
death on the cross and the resurrection of Christ cannot 
in Paul be isolated as two distinct facts: rather in his 
view they are inseparably united. Here we see in Paul 
probably one of the strongest examples of that law of 
mysticism and cult-religion that the past is thought of 
as still present.* Even linguistically this can be seen ; 
the Greek perfect participle for ‘crucified, which might 


be rendered 
He who is the Crucified,® 


ought to be very sparing in using the formula, ‘ Paul is unacquainted 
with...’ The argument from silence appears in its most objection- 
able form in the books of noisy writers who have nothing to say 
themselves. Neither the theologians (this applies even to the critical 
school) nor the amateurs who lose their bearings and found new 
religions, without having understood the old, have really freed them- 
selves inwardly as well as outwardly of the theory of mechanical 
inspiration. It is still an obstacle to right thinking methodologically. 

1 Thess. v. If. 2 Cf. above, pp. 193 f. 

3 Matt. viii. 20 (Lk. ix. 58); Mk. x. 45 (Matt. xx. 28); Lk. xxii. 27. 

4Cf. above, pp. 121 and 143. The ‘work of Christ’ spoken of in 
the past tense by dogmatic theology and isolated, is in Paul almost 
always thought of in the present tense as Christ ‘ working.’ 

5 éoravpwpevos, Gal, iii, 1; 1 Cor. i. 23; ii, 2. Also Mk. xvi. 6 
(Matt. xxviii. 5) is spoken in cult-speech. — 


198 PAUL 


goes a great deal further than the Aorist 


He who was crucified,! 


which Paul in his letters does not apply to Christ.’ 
The perfect participle no doubt indicates that the cross 
is not a bare fact of the past, but that its influence reaches 
into the present. ‘The Crucified’ is a reality that can 
be experienced daily, and the Johannine picture’ of 
the Living One who still bears in Himself the wounds 
of the Crucified, is as much Pauline as is the double 
meaning in John of the word ‘lift up,’ * which suggests 
at one and the same time the death on the lofty cross 
and the ‘exaltation’ to spiritual glory in the sense of 
the passage in Philippians.’ 

Another observation akin to this may be added. 
The use which Paul makes of the cult-phrase ‘the blood 
of Christ’ corresponds with his conviction of the identity 
of the Living One with the Crucified.° By the ‘blood 
of Christ’ is to be understood, at least in many places, 
not the physical blood, shed long ago in the historic 
martyrdom, but the expression is a vivid way of realis- 
ing the Living One who is also the Crucified, and with 
whom we live in mystical-spiritual ‘ fellowship of blood.’ ’ 
We need only recall the Apostle’s conviction that he 
stands in a fellowship of suffering, a fellowship of the 


1 gravpwleis. 


* He only once uses the indicative of the Aorist éoravpé6y (2 Cor. 
xii. 4), but in this case he is not speaking of the present power of 
blessing that comes from the crucifixion. Christ was (in the past) 
crucified in weakness. The crude materialism of later generations is 
shown in the watchword of the Theopaschite controversy ‘God who 
was crucified ’ (feds 6 cravpwbeis). 

§ John xx. 27. 4 John xii. 32, 33; ii. 14; viii. 28. 

 Rhilr ain; ; 

°On what follows see Otto Schmitz, Die Opferanschauung des 
spateren Judentums und die Opferaussagen des Neuen Testaments, 
Tubingen, 1910, p. 214 ff. 


71 Cor. x. 16, xowwvia Tod aiwaros rod Xpucrod. 


PAUL THE CHRISTIAN 199 


cross and a fellowship of life with the spiritual Christ.’ 
In many passages in particular the formula ‘in the blood 
of Christ’ borders upon the formula ‘in Christ’ and 
may be translated appropriately : 


‘in the fellowship of the blood of Christ.’ * 


If it were possible to consider the death on the cross 
and the resurrection as two separable events in Paul’s 
view, then we should certainly have to say : the central 
fact to the Apostle is the resurrection of Christ, or 
expressed more psychologically the certainty revealed 
to him at Damascus that Christ was alive. Then and 
not till then the cross became transfigured to him. 

| Without the Living One the cross would be a stumbling- 
block : the Living One makes the cross stand out in the 
brightest morning splendour of transfiguration. 

It is possible to collect quite a number of Pauline 
passages in which the raising of Jesus from the dead is 
described as of central significance amongst God’s acts.” 
And after our strong insistence on the mystical character 
of Paul’s religion this stands in no need of explanation, 
for all Christ-mysticism is founded upon the conviction 
that Christ is alive. 

The following are Paul’s convictions about the re- 
surrection of Jesus. In them old Biblical and Pharisaic 
beliefs have amalgamated with the apostolical tradi- 
tion‘ under the influence of his personal experience at 
Damascus. It was the miraculous act of God and took 


1Cf. above, p. 181 f. and 164. 

2Rom. iii. 25 (cf. with Eph. i. 9); Rom. v. 9; (cf. with v. 10); 
Eph. ii. 13. Quite rightly Martin Dibelius (in Lietzmanns Handbuch, 
jii., 2nd Hd., 1912, p. 104) says on Eph. ii. 13 ‘év 7@ aipare tod Xpuorov 
is probably simply the repetition of év Xpurr@ “Inood.’ 

31 Cor. xv. 14, 17; 2 Cor. xiii. 4; Rom. i. 4; iv. 25; v. 10; 
vi. 10; viii. 34. 

SCOR XV. 0. 


200 PAUL 


place ‘according to the scriptures’ on the third day ;° it 
was identical with the exaltation and was the resump- 
tion of the spiritual life of Jesus in glory with the 
Father.’ It was not fleshly,* but it gave to the Living 
One, probably by a process of transformation,* a spiritual 
heavenly body.° It was the conquest of death,° and it 
did away with the puzzle of the cross.’ 


Thus we have gained the standpoint from which we 
can understand the Apostle’s tremendous utterances 
about the cross. The noble fervour with which he 
hymns the solemn praises of the Crucified with ever new 
variation and modulation, stirring most profoundly the 
souls of the people by the popular force of his words, 
is psychologically intelligible as the reaction from his 
former blasphemies against the Crucified. A reminis- 
cence of his old Pharisaic polemic against the cross is 
the statement of first Corinthians that the Crucified was 
‘to the Jews a stumbling-block.’® Since Christ has. 
now become to him the Living One, Paul can annul 
these old slanders by the confession that the Crucified 
is the ‘miracle of God’ and the ‘ wisdom of God.’ 

Paul did not attempt and could not have attempted 
to express this miracle of God in one poor doctrinal 
formula. We make it impossible for ourselves ever to 
understand his position at the foot of the cross if we 


11 Cor. xv. 4, éyjyeprar 7H Huepa TH tpity Kata Tas ypadds. No 
doubt for this the LXX, Hos. vi. 2, was in the writer’s mind: é rq 
Npépa TH Tpityn eLavactynodpeba Kat Lnooueba évoriov airod (‘ on the third 
day we shall arise and live before him’). 

Phil. ii. 9 suggests this. 

®So one would conclude from 1 Cor. xv. 50. 

*So one would conclude from 1 Cor. xv. 51. 

°1 Cor. xv. 35-51; Phil. iii. 21. 61 Cor. xv. 54 f. 

“1 Cor. xv. 14,17; 2 Cor. xiii. 4. Bim iy toe 

°1 Cor. i. 23, Xpurrov eoravpwpévov, “lovdaious péev oxdvdadrov; cf. 
Gal. v. 11. 


1 Cor, i. 24, Xpuordv Oeod Stvapw Kat Geod codiav. 


PAUL THE CHRISTIAN 201 


_ begin by endeavouring to reconstruct ‘the’ doctrine of 
Paul concerning the death of Christ, in such a form, for 
instance, as to assert that ‘the’ Pauline doctrine of the 
death of Christ is the idea of sacrifice. 

The idea of sacrifice in Paul is far from having the 
importance which has generally been assigned to it on 
the basis of a materialistic explanation of passages re- 
ferring to the blood of Christ, and certain other state- 
ments.! The metaphor of sacrifice is clearly used in 
Ephesians,? possibly also in first Corinthians,’ if the 
passover-lamb there mentioned is thought of by Paul 
as a sacrificial lamb. But even if the number of pas- 
sages where sacrifice is clearly mentioned could be in- 
creased, we should still have to say, that the thought of 
sacrifice is one amongst many of the various lines of 
light which radiate from Paul’s contemplation of the 
cross, and these rays cannot be brought together into 
a single geometrical figure. 

We find, in the first place, simple historical allusions 
to the death of Jesus. It is an act done in blindness 
by the rulers of this world,‘ a shameful death,’ a defeat 
‘through weakness.’ ° 

But it is also a work of God; it is according to 
Scripture,’ it cannot have happened in vain,* it is a proof 
of divine love,’ and came at the right time.” On the 
part of Christ it is a confirmation of His obedience to 
God," of His love towards us ;” its result is the discredit 


1 Especially statements about justification, reconciliation, redemp- 
tion, etc., which refer to the spiritual living Christ, and most especi- 
ally the passage in Rom. iii. 24 ff. For the rest cf. the book by Otto 
Schmitz referred to above, p. 198. 

2 Hiph, v. 2, rapéSwxev éavrov irep ypav mpoogopav kal Guoiav TO Oe 
eis 6opnv edvwodias. 

31 Cor. v. 7, kat yap To maoxa Huadv érvOn Xpiords. 


41 Cor. ii. 8. 5 Phil. ii. 8. 692 Cor. xiii. 4. 
fis Gorexy,. 3: 8 Gal. ii. 21. 
9Rom. v. 8 ff. 10 Rom. v. 6. 


Phil. ii. 8; Rom. v. 19. 12 Gal. ii. 20; Eph. v. 2. 


202 PAUL 


of sin,! and salvation of sinners,’ even of the individual.’ 
And the cycles of Pauline metaphors, by which salvation 
‘in’ Christ is illustrated,* extend also to the contempla- 
tion of the cross. By his death on the accursed tree 
Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the Law;° 
He has publicly nailed to the cross the bond of debt 
which He blotted out ;° the enmity between Jews and 
Gentiles, like that between them both and God, is 
done away in the cross ;’ reconciliation and peace are 
established.® 

Moreover, from the use which he makes of these 
cycles of metaphor we see clearly that in his contempla- 
tion of the cross as in other things Paul was undogmatic 
and unfettered. The cross presents itself to the soul of 
the redeemed not as a gloomy thing of the past, wooden, 
hard and bare, abandoned to the soteriologists and 
Christologists, but as a mystery of the present shining 
in its own light, which is included for him in the Living 
One. 

And this is especially clearly seen in ‘the words 
already mentioned several times in which the Apostle 
treats the sufferings, crucifixion, death, burial, and re- 
surrection of Christ as processes of salvation which he 
and other Christians share in ethically and mystically,° 
not only in baptism but in a continuous fellowship of 
suffering, of the cross, of blood and of life with their 
transfigured Master. Of all the religious appreciations 
of the cross in Paul these are probably the deepest and 
most original: through the certainty of fellowship as a 


1 Rom. vi. 10. 

2 Rom. v. 6; 1 Cor. xv. 8; 2 Cor. v. 14, ete. 

3 Gal. ii. 20; 1 Cor. viii. 11; Rom. xiv. 15. 
4Cf. above, p. 167 ff. 5 Gal, iti. 13. 
6 Col. ii. 14. 7 Hph. 1. 16. 
8 Col. i. 20 ff.; Rom. v. 10. 

9 Cf. above, pp. 164 f., 180 f., and 198. 


PAUL THE CHRISTIAN 203 


member of Christ the cross has become, instead of a 
historical conception, altogether a spiritual, mystically 
realised and living reality. My late father’ understood 
Paul when he got Schmitz, the glass-painter of Cologne, 
to put a window in the Evangelical Church at Erbach, 
in the wine-growing country of the upper Rheingau, re- 
presenting the crucified Saviour in conjunction with the 
Johannine allegory of the vine.2 The cross has struck 
root in the earth, and the dead tree of pain* has become 
the living vine. Beneath the out-stretched arms of the 
Saviour the mystic branches stretch down their bright 
green leaves and heavy clusters of grapes to the com- 
municants who are united by His sufferings : 


I am the Vine! 
Ye are the branches. 


1(Adolf Deissmann, 1832-1900, pastor of Erbach and local his- 
torian.—L.R.M.S.] 

2 John xv. 1 ff. 

3This artistic motiy itself, however, is early Christian. Cf. Lud- 
wig von Sybel, BvAov fwfs, Z.N.T.W., 19 (1919), p. 85 ff For a later 
use of this profound thought cf. below, in the appendices ‘Santa 
Croce, Florence’ by Otto Crusius. 


oy AS 4 
aaa ew 
} 


ie ty 
A 


ALA : fo. HY. . 1G te pe 
RUB Nery RTS E Nee ONAL 


ano 
7 at rier Aiea Osh q ay Vax! ay 
rhay PU 181} Ri ‘ bet bidet ey a i, aL Ha Vue 
Nes | Many alae Mh Mh! Bie dak 
; ; } Ph, 





PAUL THE CHRISTIAN (Continued) 


‘ 
Ui 


mies 
4 4 





CHAPTER IX 
PAUL THE CHRISTIAN (Continued) 
THE LOVE OF CHRIST AND THE HOPE OF CHRIST 


Ir is out of the fellowship with Christ that we can 
understand all the teaching of Paul that is usually 
summed up under the headings ‘ Ethics’ and ‘ Escha- 
tology.’ Here let it at once be said that both these 
classifications lead to misconceptions. 

Paul was neither a teacher of ethics nor an escha- 
tologist. His whole being was fired with a world-con- 
quering ethos, and he thirsted with his whole soul for 
the coming day of God, but he had no ‘ethics’ and no 
‘eschatology,’ if by those terms rationally complete and 
balanced systematic theories of ethics or eschatology are 
to be understood. Furthermore, the fragmentary char- 
acter of his utterances as they have come down to us 
prevents in this case as in others any attempt at a full 
and systematic statement. 

Therefore we must remain simple here also and not 
attempt to disfigure plain greatness with doctrinaire 
Arabesques. So instead of the elaborate modern 
scholastic terminology we use the popular watchwords 
coined by the Apostle himself—‘ the love of Christ ’ and 
‘the hope of Christ.’ 


The priceless treasure of ethical convictions which 
Paul brought with him from Judaism into the 
Hellenistic world'—a treasure greatly enriched by the 


1T¢ would be a task as important as it is stimulating to gather 
together out of authors, inscriptions, papyri, etc., everything that can 
207 


208 PAUL 


Gospel tradition—received its peculiar brilliance through 
the experience of Christ which, working from within, 
renews the entire man. The ethical element in Paul 
is indeed anchored ‘in Christ.’ It is here that the 
energy of his Christ-mysticism, working through the 
will, is most clearly seen.’ ‘The love of Christ’? is the 
power for good which the individual possesses, and the 
power for good which permeates the whole organisation 
of Christendom. 

Especially this latter, the social-ethic, is unmistak- 
ably religious in tone. Paul is most fond of regarding 
the community of believers under three aspects—as a 
family, as a body, as a temple. Each of these meta- 
phors has its centre in the living Christ. 

Christians are a family, because God is their Father,’ 
and Christ, as the first-born Son of God, is their 
Brother,* whose rights to inheritance they share.’ 
Differences of nation, class and sex ‘in Christ’ are no 
longer of account :° 


There is neither Jew nor Greek, 

There is neither slave nor free, 

There is no male and female: 

For ye are all one man in Christ Jesus. 


be called the popular morality of late antiquity. This would be a 
reconstruction of a but little recognised piece of the great praeparatio 
evangelica. Material of all sorts towards this is given in Licht vom 
Osten, 4th Ed., p. 262 ff. 

1Cf. above, p. 156 f. 

22 Cor. v. 14; Hph. iii. 19 (Rom. viii. 352). Cf. on this point 
Schmitz, Die Christusgemeinschaft, p. 184 ff., who tellingly designates 
‘the love of Christ,’ the living power which constantly impels Paul, 
as ‘the outcome of experience which is based upon spiritual unity with 
the Crucified’ (p. 136). 

* Numerous passages. 

4 Rom. viii. 29. ° Rom. viii. 17. 

° Gal. iii. 28, ov ev Iovdatos ob8t"EAAny, otk eve Sods OddE eAevOepos, 
ovuK evi dpoev Kat OnAv* dravres yap bucis els Eore ev XpioTS “Inood. 


PAUL THE CHRISTIAN 209 


The religious gulf also between Jews and non-Jews 
is bridged over :? 
Where there is no Greek and Jew, 
Circumcision and uncircumcision, 


Barbarian, Scythian, slave, freeman, 
But Christ is all and in all. 


Yes even the racial hatred between Jew and non-Jew, 
the ‘enmity’ between the nations, is done away in 
Christ Jesus. The passage in Ephesians’? in which 
these gigantic certainties tower aloft, shedding their 
light about them, is the Magna Charta of the idea of 
Christian Internationalism,? and a programme for a 
divine Millennium, of which we to-day indeed can 
scarcely see the very first glint of dawn slowly breaking 
out of the gloomy confusion of mankind’s awtul night. 
Paul took the name of brother very seriously : 


The brother for whose sake Christ died,* 
Him for whom Christ died.° 


With such irresistible words he stamps even the most 
insignificant brother with a value for eternity and 
impresses upon the enlightened indifference of the saints 
in Corinth and in Rome the duty of tender brotherly 
consideration, making all Christians together collectively 
responsible for the mutual care of souls." 


1Col. iii, 11, daov od é “EAAnv kal “lovdatos, mepitopn Kat &Kpo- 
Bvoria, BapBapos, SKvOns, dovAos, cAevGepos, GANG mavTa Kal év Tacw 
Xpictds. 

2 Wiph. ii. 11-22. 

3T have dealt more fully with this subject in an address given at 
Whitefield’s Central Mission in London to a men’s meeting at the 
beginning of holy week in 1923 (The Cross of Christ and the Kecon- 
ciliation of the Nations, printed in ‘The Christian World Pulpit,’ 
1923). . 

41 Cor. viii. 11, 6 ddeddpos dv dy Xprords dwreGavev. 

5 Rom. xiv. 15, éxefvov, iwép ov Xpioros dwréaver. 

6 Gal. vi. 1, 2, ddeAdoi, giv Kal mpodnuhOy dvOpwros ev tur Trapa- 
rTopatl, iets ot TvevpariKxol KatapTilere TOV TOLOUTOV eV TVEU[LATL TPAUTYTOS, 


14 


210 PAUL 


Brethren, even if a man be overtaken in any trespass, ye 
which are spiritual, restore such a one in a spirit of meekness ; 
looking to thyself lest thou also be tempted. Bear ye one 
another’s burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ. 


But the most sublime evidence of Paul’s sense of 
brotherhood is the ‘way’! which he showed to the 
Corinthians, the Song of Songs on brotherly love :” 


If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, 
But have not love, 

I am become sounding brass 

Or a clanging cymbal. 


And if I have the gift of prophecy, 

And knew all mysteries and all knowledge, 
And if I had all faith, 

So as to remove mountains, 

But have not love, 

IT am nothing. 


lal \ ss \ \ al 3 / \ / / \ 
oKoTav ceavTov py Kal ov mepacOns. adAnAwy Ta Bapy Baordere, Kat 
oUTws avamAnpdcete TOV Vopov TOV Xpicrov. 
11 Cor, xii. 31. | 
21 Cor. xili, éay tats yAdoous trav avOpiruv AadAG Kal Tov ayyédov, 
ey WA be 4 ed / \ Wal ice v , , > , be bat + 
ayamrnv O€ LN EXW, yeyova xaAkos NXov y KiuPadrov drdadalov. Kal é€av EXW 
ad \ A“ lal 
mpopyteiav Kal cidO TA PUOTHPLA TaVTA Kal TacaV THV yvOoUW, Kal eav exw 
Tacav THv TioTW Wate Opn peOioTaval, aydryny Sé ur) Exw, OVO cit. Kal 
civ Ywpicw Tavra TA trdpxovTa pov, Kal edv mapado TO Goud pov wa 
/ 3 / \ \ 7 > \ > Le) ¢ 3 / “a 
KavOnocopat, aydrnv dé py exw, ovGev ddeAoTua, Y aydrn pakpoOupel, 
/ la A 
Xpynoreverar y aydmrn, od Lnrot 7 aya, ov TeprepeveTat, 00 Pvg.ovtat, OVK 
3 a a a / 
aoxnmovel, ov Cytet Ta EauTHs, ov Taposvverat, od AoyiLetar Tov KaKOV, OV 
7, aN a 10 / / be a 3 / , 4 , A 
Xaiper ert TH adikia, cvyxaiper O€ 77 GAnOeia. TavTa oTEeyEl, TdvTA TLOTEVEL, 
/ 
mavta éAriler, wévtTa vropever, % Ayaan ovderote wimtea, ite Se rpopy- 
Gus , a + a 
Tela, KatapynOycovTa: cite yAOooal, TavoovTaL* ETE Yyvaous, KaTapyn- 
/ / 
Ojoetar. €k péepovs yap ywooKomev Kal ex péepous tpopyrevonev. Stav Oe 
XO \ aN \ ] / Ay 4 4 / 2X. aN 
eAGn TO TéAELOV, TO EK pEpoUs KaTapynOnoeTaL. OTE NuUNV VHTLOS, éAdAovV 
¢ f > / € ik 2 U e / oY ; ey 
@S vyTLOS, éPpdvovy ws vymios, eLoyiLounv ws vyTLoS* OTE yéyova avy, 
/ aA 3 / 
KaTHpynka Ta TOU vytiov. PBA€ropev yap apre du eodrtpov ev aiviypart, TOTE 
\ 4 \ / 
d€ zpdcwrov mpos tpdcwrov* apte ywwoKw ek pepos* Tdre Se ervyvocropat 
Kaba Kat 2 , 6 : \ be / / 2). 7 2 <7 \ U a 
S ereyvooOnv: vuvi d€ péver Tiotis, éAmis, yarn, TA Tpia TATA, 
/ lal 
pelo 8 rodtwv 4 ayarn. 


PAUL THE CHRISTIAN 


And if I share out all my goods morsel by morsel, 
And if I give my body to be burned, 

But have not love, 

It profiteth me nothing. 


Love suffereth long, 
Kind is love, 

Not envious is love, 
It boasteth not, 

Is not puffed up, 

Ts not unseemly. 


It seeketh not its own, 
Is not provoked, 
Taketh no account of evil. 
It rejoiceth not in unrighteousness, 
But rejoiceth with the truth. 
It covereth all things, 
Believeth all things, 
Hopeth all things, 
Endureth all things. 


Love never faileth. 
But whether there be prophecies, they shall be done away ; 
Whether there be tongues, they shall cease ; 
Whether there be knowledge, it shall be done away. 
For we know in part, 
And we prophesy in part: 
But when that which is perfect is come, 
That which is in part shall be done away. 


When I was a child, 

I spake as a child, 

I felt as a child, 

I thought as a child: 

Now I am become a man 

I have put away childish things. 


Yes it is thus: now we see 

Only mirror reflections, 

Only a riddle— 

But then face to face: 

Now I know in part; 

But then I shall know fully 

Hyen as also I have been fully known. 


211 


212 PAUL 


But now abideth 

Faith, hope, love, 

These three, 

But the greatest of these is love. 


Christians are a ‘body’ and Christ is the head, or 
Christ is the body and Christians are the members.’ 
Here Paul has taken a well-known metaphor of which 
the ancients were fond, from his Christ-intimacy has 
infused it with mystical life, and thereby Christianised 
it. His corporative-idea, profound in its simplicity, was 
passed on by him to assist the progress of the future 
Church. 

The figure is no less popular when both the in- 
dividual Christian? and the Church® are spoken of as 
a temple which is still building, and which, though in- 
habited by God, requires to be more and more ‘ edified.’ 
Paul had seen such unfinished temples in his journeys 
in Jerusalem and Asia Minor.* The temple of Herod 
was only finished in the sixties of the first century, a 
short time before its destruction. Like the cathedrals 
of the Middle Ages, these ancient temples needed the 
work of one generation after another for their building. 
This is the explanation of Paul’s favourite thought of 


141 Gor. xii. 12; Col. i. 18, 24; i. 19; Hph. iv. 16; ve2aeom: 
xii. 4 ff. Cf. on this point the work of Traugott Schmidt mentioned 
above, p. 141. 

oan Wn Oey ein 7 Pa Re 

SA Cor) ii Ot Eph. ii, 20 ff. ; 2 Cor. vi. 16. 

4When we were in Asia Minor we repeatedly saw in the ex- 
cavations of ancient temples unfinished stones from those old times, 
which had not yet received the final strokes of the mason’s hammer. 
And on a glorious spring morning (April 18th, 1906) as we were being 
taken by boats to the Turkish steamer across the bay of Panormus, 
which lies between Miletus and Didyma, we saw in the shallow water 
along the coast the gigantic capitals of marble columns, which had been 
waiting two thousand years for the team which was to take the building 
materials, brought so far by ship, up the hill to their destiny at the 
Didymaion. 


PAUL THE CHRISTIAN 213 


‘edification ’—‘ building up,’ which is emphasised par- 
ticularly in first and second Corinthians. We see the 
work going forward once more on the site where the 
new Christian community is being built up :! 


According to the grace of God which was given unto me, as 
a Wise master builder I laid a foundation; and another buildeth 
thereon. But let each man take care how he buildeth thereon. 
For other foundation can no man lay than that which is laid, which 
is Jesus Christ. But if any man buildeth on the foundation gold, 
silver, costly stones, wood, hay, reed; each man’s work shall be 
manifest; for the day? shall declare it, because it is revealed in 
fire; and the fire shall prove each man’s work of what sort it is. 


There are incapable persons, who, instead of a temple 
built of fine squared stones, decorated with gold and 
silver, can only manage to erect light wooden sheds or 
even miserable huts of straw and reed.‘ Paul, the city- 
dweller, who may often have seen in his journeys such 


11 Cor. iii. 10-13, cara rv yapw rod Oeod tiv dobeiady por ds copds 
dpxitéxtwv Oeuediov €Oynka, adAos Se rorxodomel. Exactos dé BAerérw TOs 
éroixodomet. Oenédiov yap dAdXov ovdcis Svvatat Oeivar Tapa Tov KEtpEvOV, OS 
éotw “Inoots Xpiotos. i S€ tis eroixodopet emi Tov Oepédvov XpvCtor, 
dpy’piov, Aiovs Tiytovs, EiAa, x6ptov, KaAdpnv, Exdotov Td épyov Pavepov 
yevnoetat* 4 yop Hpépa dnAdoe, OTe ev Tupt arroxaimrTeTaL, Kal ExdoTOU TO 
epyov drotov éoti TO Tip SoKiace.. 

We ought to consider here whether the sentence (v. 11) ‘another 
foundation can no man lay . . .’ contains a polemical allusion to the 
Cephas-party at Corinth (1 Cor. i. 12, etc.), who had perhaps raised 
opposition to Paul by referring to the saying about the foundation 
applied to Peter, which now stands in Matt. xvi. 18. 

2 The last day. 

3 Otto Eger, Rechtsgeschichtliches zum Neuen Testament, Basel, 
1919, p. 87 ff., has explained this passage (down to v. 15) wonderfully 
by means of the customs used in building which have now become 
known from inscriptions. 

4Such as Herodotus mentions among the inhabitants of Sardis, 
such as until a few decades ago were to be found amongst the Yuruks 
on the plains of Ephesus (forschungen in Ephesos verdffentlicht vom 

“Osterreichischen Archaeologischen Institute, Vienna, 1906, vol. 1, 
p. 12 f.), and such as we ourselves also visited on the banks of the 
Maeander near the ruins of Magnesia. 


214 PAUL 


wretched dwellings reduced to ashes in a moment, does 
not wish that the churches of Christ should be like 
them. The solid foundation, the like of which had 
never been seen, demanded a massive and noble super- 
structure. 


Nevertheless, Paul was far from formulating a fixed 
‘conception of the Church’ which would satisfy a 
lawyer." The Apostle cannot be called the father of 
the constitutional Church. His churches were ‘as- 
semblies’? summoned by God—God’s levy. All of 
them together are spoken of as the ‘assembly’*® and 
the single assembly sometimes possessed also ‘house- 
assemblies,’ * that is smaller fellowship-circles meeting 
for edification in certain houses. Through all these 
brotherhoods, larger or smaller, breathes the Spirit, 
perceptible in the wondrous effects produced, and be- 
stowing on every brother the special grace (charisma) 
that the assembly needs. First Corinthians is the 
classical evidence for this charismatic age before the 
days of the Church.° 

The modest beginnings of an external organisation 
were suggested by the needs themselves, but could also 
be adopted from the various forms of organisation of 
associations which existed in antiquity, in particular 
from the synagogues amongst the Jews and from the 
religious clubs of the surrounding heathen world.® 


*The very valuable study of Karl Holl, Der Kirchenbegriff des 
Paulus in seinem Verhdltnis zu dem der Urgemeinde, Sitzungsberichte 
der Preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1921, p. 920 ff. (cf. 
above, p. 122, note 3), has not yet convinced me on all points. } 

2 éxxAnolat. 

4 éxxAnoia, 1 Cor, x. 32; xii. 28; Col. i. 18, 24, ete. 

“ Kar otkov éxxAnoia, 1 Cor. xvi. 19; Col. iv. 15; Philem. 2; 
Rom. xvi. 5. 

°Cf. especially 1 Cor. xii. 27 ff., also Rom. xii. 4 ff. 

° We are indebted to the work of Georg Heinrici for this valuable 
analogy. 


PAUL THE CHRISTIAN 215 


These two analogies with their motley variety of offices 
and names of offices (very clearly illustrated by inscrip- 
tions) are a sufficient hint that we had better not look 
to find forms of ‘constitution,’ and names of officers 
quite uniform in all the Pauline churches. What held 
together the churches of Paul scattered over the Medi- 
terranean world was in the last resort, not their ‘ con- 
stitution, but the personality behind them all, which 
‘burned’* with sympathy at their every trouble—the 
personality of the Apostle. It was his prayer and self- 
sacrificing manual labour, his messengers, letters and 
visits, as well as his sharing in the common work of 
love, which kept the saints together. 


His letters are a witness how wide and how manly 
his ethical ideal was. They are full of detached moral 
exhortations. Problems of the day in plenty were 
settled by this great pastor, always on the basis of the 
certainty of his fellowship with Christ and always in 
the light of the Gospel. But we should not attempt to 
make a Pauline ‘system of ethics’ out of all these 
scattered sayings, and above all we must avoid the 
mistake of saying that things which happen not to be 
mentioned in his letters were ‘beyond his ethical 
horizon.’ Here again we have to remember that the 
letters are fragments.” Moreover, Paul is no professed 
ethical theorist. Like other great spiritual guides, in 
important questions of ethical principle, he felt no 
necessity to harmonise his principles with one another: 
everything comes from God, from Christ, through the 
Spirit ; yet Paul also believes man is capable of every- 
thing. Therefore determinists and indeterminists alike 


19 Cor. xi. 29, ris cxavdariLerat, Kal ovk éy@ rupodpat ; 

2On this point, important for critical method, cf. above, pp. 4 ff. 
and 196 f. 

3 Cf. above, p. 5 f. and p. 207. 


216 PAUL 


claim his authority: Paul himself was neither one nor 
the other ; to him the oar was as valuable as the sail : 


So then, my beloved, even as ye have always obeyed, work 
out not in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, 
your own salvation with fear and trembling. For it is God 
which worketh in you both to will and to work, for His good 
pleasure. 


Perhaps the greatest thing about this practical 
ethical ideal is the fact that its energy was in no way 
paralysed by the mighty hopes that were at work in 
Paul’s soul. 

The ‘hope in Christ,’* the ‘ hope of Christ,’* which 
we find in Paul is not a comparatively outlying portion 
of his ‘system,’ like a section on eschatology which is 
hurried through at the end of a term’s lectures on 
dogmatics. Rather it is one of the motive forces of his 
life in Christ. This could be demonstrated merely from 
the importance he attaches to the ideas of ‘ testament,’ 
‘promise, and ‘inheritance’ which all point to the 
future. For Paul salvation is not a thing of the past, 
but of the present and future. 

To elaborate Paul’s hope systematically as ‘escha- 
tology’ is to deprive it of its perennial freshness and 
does not in the end enable one to reconstruct a uniform 


1 Phil. ii. 12, 13, dcre, dyamrnrol pov, kabws mavtote trynKovcarTe, pH 
as é TH mapovoia pov povov GAA viv TOAA@ padXov év TH Gzrovoia pov, 
peta. PbBov Kal tTpdpov THY EavTdv cwrypiav KaTepydlecbe. Geos yap éorw 
5 évepyav &v tyiv Kal 7d Oédew Kal 76 evepyetv trép THs evdoxias. The 
difficult izép rhs eidoxias stands, probably like the frequent formula 
of Egyptian inscriptions of the Imperial period from Tehnéh, tzép 
ebxapiorias, indicating that the offering has been made as an expression 
of ‘thanks’ to the gods (see Annales du Service des Antiquités, 1905, 
p. 150 ff). 

21 Cor. xv. 19, év Xpior@ HAruKOTes. 

31 Thess. i. 3, 7 éAmis rod Kupiov Huav “Inootd Xpiorod. Cf. on this 
point, M. Dibelius in Lietzmanns Handbuch, iii., 2 (1911), p. 3, and O. 
Schmitz, Die Christus gemeinschaft, p. 140 ff. 


PAUL THE CHRISTIAN 217 


system from the fragmentary statements in the letters, 
for they are strongly influenced by the writer's mood 
and point in different directions.1 Paul himself said of 
the hope that it must not be confused with sight,’ and 
although his own hope reaches a high degree of personal 
certainty (‘we know,’ says Paul when he is hoping’), we 
see on the whole a marked psychological polarity in 
his expectation of the future. J am by no means sure 
that we can assume that instead of this polar relation 
there was a gradual ‘evolution’ from one extreme to 
the other. 


The polarity of Paul’s hope of Christ is to be seen 
in two points. 

Relying implicitly on the prophetic words of Jesus, 
the Apostle is certain that the ‘coming’* of Christ to 
complete the Kingdom of God on earth will soon take 
place—so certain that he himself hopes to witness the 
coming.’ But alongside this vivid hope, that Christ will 
come to us, ahope entirely native Jewish in spirit, there 
is also the more tender longing that we may go to 
Christ :° 

‘I have the desire to depart and be with Christ.’ 


This ‘with Christ’” isa higher stage than the ‘in 
Christ’ which can be experienced here on earth. He 
who is united ‘with Christ’ ‘face to face’* will have 


1 Cf. above, p. 207. 

2 Rom. viii. 24, édmls 8¢ Breropevyn od« eorw emis. 

3 ofSapev, 2 Cor. v. 1. 

4TIapovcia. For history of the idea of the Parousia see Licht vom 
Osten, 4th. Ed., p. 314 f. 

51 Thess. iv. 17; 1 Cor. xv. 51 f. 

6 Phil. i. 23, tiv eriOvplav éxwv eis TO dvaddorat Kat ovv XpioT@ civar. 

Totv Xpioro, 1 Thess. iv. 17; v. 10; Phil. i. 23; 2 Cor. xili. 4; 
Rom. viii. 32; probably also Col. iii. 3. 


> eee \ / 
8] Cor. xiii. 12, tpdcwrov rpos TPOTwTOV. 


218 PAUL 


put off all that is fleshly and will possess a spiritual 
body,’ similar to Christ’s own body of light.” The 
Apostle’s hope did not however dogmatically fix the 
time of this metamorphosis. At one time it tends 
towards the more Jewish and Pharisaic conviction of ‘ the 
resurrection ’: the dead will rest for some time in their 
graves and will be awakened at the parousia of Christ 
and along with those who are still alive ‘changed’ into 
the spiritual. At another time his prophetic gaze is 
more Hellenistic and is-directed towards the immortality 
of the soul: 

For we know: 

If our earthly tent-house be dissolved, 

We have a building from God, 


A house not made with hands, 
Eternal in the heavens.* 


Thus in Paul there run side by side Eastern (native- 
Jewish) and Western (Hellenistic-cosmopolitan) expres- 
sions of the hope, and the great popular preacher feels 
no necessity to harmonise them theoretically. The 
sacred stream which rolls its waters towards eternity 
shows for a long time the double colouring due to its 
two tributaries. The artless realism of the popular 
imagination is shown in the fact that Paul mcorporated 
in his ‘mystery’® of hope, as something taken for 
granted, features adopted from the ancient popular 
expectation of his fathers—the dramatic character of 
the events expected, the voice of the archangel,° the 


1 gGpa arvevparikov, 1 Cor. xv. 36 ff. 

* Phil. iii. 21, ciupopdov 76 coHparte tHs Sdéys adrod. 

31 Cor. xv. 51 ff. 

42 Cor. v. 1, ot8apev yap dru éav % ériyevos jay oikia Tod oKHvous 
KatavO7, oikodopnvy ék Oeod exopev, oikiav dxeipoTointov aidviov év Tots 
ovpavots. (See above, p. 60.) . 

51 Cor. xv. 51, dod pvorypiov tpty rEyo. 

61 Thess. iv. 16. 


PAUL THE CHRISTIAN 219 


trumpet-blast,! the ‘descent’? of Christ from heaven 
and the ascent of the faithful ‘into the air,’ ‘to the 
clouds,’ ‘to meet the Lord,’* and the fiery glow of the 
last judgment lighting up the whole picture.* 

/ The effectual certainties in it all are these: the Last 
Judgment by Christ® and His saints,’ the annihilation 
of all the Satanic and demonic powers hostile to God,’ 
the conquest of the last enemy, thanatos* (death), the 
reign of Christ,’ the salvation already experienced on 
earth ‘in Christ,’ finally completed ‘with Christ,’ that 
is to say, in personal fellowship face to face,” and at 
last the giving up of the Kingdom by the Son to the 
Father", But at the remotest distance of the horizon 
swept by the Apostle’s prophetic vision we still see the 
glory of the unfathomable, immeasurable certainty :” 


God is all in all. 


The eye that was privileged to take this last look 
was not blinded by the lightning” of the day of the 
Lord. Paul for himself drew many practical inferences 
from the nearness of the end of the world (e.g. that it 
was better for him not to marry), but his longing in 
Christ for the new world, though enthusiastic and. 
ardent to an extent that makes the comfortable paper 
eschatology of our dogmatic shrivel up to nothing in 


11 Thess. iv. 16; 1 Cor. xv. 22. 
21 Thess. iv. 16, xatraByoerar dm ovpavov. 
31 Thess. iv. 17, dpraynodpcba ev vedédais «is aravrnaw Tov Kupiov 


eis dépa. 
49 Thess. i. 8; 1 Cor. iii. 13 ff. 
59 Cor. v. 10, ete. 61 Cor. vi. 2 f. 
71 Cor. xv. 24 f. 81 Cor. xv. 26. 
91 Cor. xv. 25, etc. 10 Cf, above, p. 217. 


111 Cor. xv. 24, 28. 

121 Cor. xv. 28, 6 Ocds Ta mavta év TacW. 
13 Matt. xxiv. 27 (Lk. xvii. 24). 

14] Cor. vii. 7, 8, 26. 


220 PAUL 


comparison, did not degenerate into an unhealthy and 
barren chiliasm or quietism. On the contrary, it set 
free moral forces to act on this passing! world. Cer- 
tainly without the hope of Christ Paul would not have 
become famous in history as the man of action, the 
Apostle of Christ. 


11 Cor. vii. 31,\rapaye: yap 76 cyjpa Tod Kdcpov TovTOV. 


PAUL THE APOSTLE 


a i 


~~ & 


i 


ue 
as ae | 





CHAPTER X 
PAUL THE APOSTLE 


Born in the borderland between the Hellenistic and 
Semitic world, on one of the great international roads 
connecting East and West, Saul, the Semitic-Hellenist, 
who was also called Paul, felt a vast compelling impulse 
to traverse the world from East to West: 


Necessity is laid upon me; yea, woe is me if I preach not the 
gospel.! 
From Jerusalem and round about even unto Illyricum I have 
fully preached the gospel of Christ.? 
I must also see Rome.? 
Whensoever I go unto Spain.* 


The sick man buffeted by the messenger of Satan,° 
spent almost a generation in travelling.© The Jew, who 
came from Cilicia, Jerusalem, and Syria to Ephesus and 
Corinth, looked towards Rome and beyond Rome longly 
towards the end of the world, to Spain.’ The mystic, 
filled with the Spirit, who, on the coast of Asia Minor, 
heard in a vision the voice of the West :° 


Come over and help us, 


11 Cor, ix. 16, dvayxn ydp pot érixertar oval yap pot éotw, dv py 
evayyeAtCwpar. 

2 Rom. xv. 19. 

8 Acts xix. 21, det pe cat ‘Pony idetv. 

4Rom. xv. 24. 

CG i ap ah ay & 

62 Cor. xi. 26. 

7 Rom. xv. 22 ff. 

8 Acts xvi. 9, duaBas . . . BonOnoov npyiv. 

(223) 


224 PAUL 


is a man whose practical performance is almost un- 
paralleled :* 
I have laboured more abundantly than they all. 


He who with prophetic vision saw the coming of 
Christ and the new Heaven and the new Earth, had, in 
preparing for the coming of the new world, spread over 
the old a network of organisation which was destined 
to prove effective in the history of the world for 
thousands of years. 

It was as a missionary that Paul had the most 
definite influence upon subsequent history.’ 

This does not mean, of course, that the world con- 
temporary with him observed, or had the remotest con- 
ception of the mighty influence vouchsafed to the work 
of his life. His own age saw nothing remarkable in the 
travelling tent-maker.* To the Roman official, before 
whose tribunal he was brought by the denunciation of 
malicious adversaries, he was an obscure Jew, or per- 
haps a mad enthusiast.* 

No doubt occasionally, as in Cyprus,’ Paul made an 
impression even on a distinguished Roman, and by the 
power of his personality he often had great influence 
over simple people. In the interior of Asia Minor he 
was once taken for the god Hermes,° another time the 


11 Cor. xv. 10, wepicodrepov aitév ravtwy éxoriacga. This statement 
can be taken literally and established by statistics. The map shows 
about twenty places where Christianity was established by the primi- 
tive Apostles to thirty where it was established by Paul. 

2Further on the subject of the following paragraphs, cf. the ex- 
cellent studies of Paul Wernle, Paulus als Heidenmissionar, 2nd Kd., 
Tibingen, 1909, and of Georg Heinrici, Paulus als Seelsorger, Gross- 
Lichterfelde, 1910, but most of all those profound works, the fruit of 
the authors’ own work in the mission-field, J. Warneck’s Paulus im 
Inchte der heutigen Hetdenmission, 2nd Hd., Berlin, 1914, and Albrecht 
Oepke’s Die Missionspredigt des Apostels Paulus, Leipzig, 1920. 

3 Cf. above, p. 06 and p. 74. 4 Acts xxvi. 24. 

5 Acts xiii, 12. 6 Acts xiv. 12. 


PAUL THE APOSTLE 225 


Anatolians received him as an angel of God, even as 
Jesus Christ Himself! So, too, the natives of the 
island of Malta, who had at first suspected the prisoner 
Paul to be a murderer, afterwards, when they saw him 
throw into the fire the poisonous snake that hung on his 
hand, were ready to pronounce him a god.” And before 
that, in the terrible storm which ended in the shipwreck 
at Malta, Paul was the only person amongst the 276 
people on board the Alexandrian corn-ship who kept 
his self-possession and by his exhortation saved the 
others from despair.’ 

But on the whole, the leading men of his time, 
especially the literary leaders, took no notice of the 
traveller, and when he did on occasion, as in Athens, 
come into contact with philosophers they either put him 
off with the phrases of the worldly wise * or abused him ° 
and regarded him as a ridiculous personage :° 


What has this miserable babbler to say ? 


Paul himself felt the distance that separated him 
from the leading men of letters. Not from any feeling 
of weakness, but with a strong consciousness of superi- 
ority, he speaks of himself as a layman and a person 


1 Gal. iv. 14. 2 Acts xxviii. 3-6. 

3 Acts xxvii. 33 ff. This scene has a remarkable parallel in an 
experience of Goethe’s in May, 1787, at Capri, on the journey back 
from Messina: in a calm his ship came into a sea-current and was 
threatened with destruction on the rocks of the coast. Then the 
worldling encouraged the despairing passengers to pray to the Mother 
of God. But the strength and naiveté (and in religion that means 

everything) was on the side of the apostolic voyager on the Mediter- 
ranean. Of. also the experience of Albrecht Direr in December, 1520, 
at Arnemuiden (Armuyden) given on p. 71 f. of the book mentioned 
above, p. 9, note. The Goethe parallel has now been used by Edward 
Meyer in Ursprung und Anfénge des Christentums, ili. (1923), p. 39. 
4 Thid. 5 Acts xvil. 32. 
6 Acts xvii, 18, 7é dv Oéd0 5 omeppoddyos bros AEyew ; 


15 


226 PAUL 


unknown.’ To the world at large Paul, the missionary, 
was just one of the many travelling speakers who then 
went up and down in the world in the service of some 
philosophical or religious idea : * 

A setter forth of strange demons.® 


We know something of the popular preacher of 
philosophy who gathered an audience about him from 
the people of the great cities. In particular the dis- 
ciples of the Stoa and of the Cynic philosophies were 
energetic in itinerant propaganda. 

But there was also no lack of religious emissaries. 
The age of Paul was an age of missions and that not 
simply on account of his work, but also through the 
great migration of heathen deities, which transplanted 
eastern cults into the West and North and Greco- 
Roman cults into the East. 

We have important proofs of missionary work 
before Paul in the immediate surroundings of Paul 
himself. On the one hand, Judaism in general, and 
especially the Pharisees, made propaganda for their 
cause. Jesus said in His controversial utterances 
against the Pharisees : * 


Ye compass sea and land to make one proselyte. 


Thus the very tendency in Judaism to which Paul 
as a young man gave his adhesion had already given 
practical effect to the impulse of expansion and that 
gloriously living language of Romans® reflects the 
Jewish feeling of religious superiority, which was 
psychologically the basis of the missionary impulse. 

1Cf. above, p. 75. 

2Cf. on this point E. von Dobschiitz, Die Thessalonicher-Briefe 
(Meyer X"), Gottingen, 1909, p. 2 ff. 

3 Acts xvii. 18, f€vwv dapoviwv Katayyedevs. 

4Matt, xxiii. 15, wepudyere tov Oddacoav Kai THY Enpdv Tovnoas Eva 


TpoonAvtov. 


Rom. ii. 19f. Cf. above, p. 93 f. 


PAUL THE APOSTLE 227 


On the other hand, we find at the time of Paul’s 
mission in Ephesus a church of twelve Baptists.! 
These Ephesian disciples of John the Baptist surely 
suggest the conclusion that there had been some sort of 
Baptist propaganda. 

The whole contemporary religious world was thus in 
a state of vigorous movement even before Paul, and 
the roads on which Paul the missionary travelled were 
also trodden by the emissaries of Isis and Serapis,’ of 
the God of the Jews and of the Great Mother of 
Phrygia. 


Yet it would surely be impossible to mention any 
other missionary of that period whose journeys can 
have led him so far as did Paul’s. Paul’s journeys are 
lines drawn from the most important city centres of 
culture in the East to the most important centres of 
commerce in the West. Any one who, with the map of 
the Roman Empire before him, merely hears the names 
of Paul’s stopping-places, will be bound to wonder at 
the world-wide extent of his field of work. Tarsus, 
Jerusalem, Damascus, Antioch, Cyprus, Iconium, 
Galatia, Phrygia, Ephesus, Troas, Philippi, ‘Thes- 
salonica, Athens, Corinth, Illyricum, Rome, perhaps 
also Crete and Spain—the sower who ploughed the 
furrows and scattered the seed over this area deserves 
to have the words of the Master applied to him : 


The field is the world. # 


The cosmopolitan cities were especially his sphere 
of work. Paul the city-dweller evangelised in the 
ereat cities. Therefore churches dedicated to St. Paul 
ought not to be built ‘before the walls,’ but in the 


1 Acts xix. 1 ff. 

20f. Zoilos the servant of Serapis and his propaganda, above, 
p. 12. 

3 Matt. xiii. 38. 


228 | PAUL 


forum ; where in an ancient city stood the temple of 
Hermes,! the god whom the people of Lystra took 
Paul to be. Amid the bustle and hurry of labour, 
there where the waves of the human sea roar and 
break, while high in the air the wire of the talking 
giant-city vibrate as they link up church tower with 
hospital, market hall and Parliament, it is right that 
to-day there should be pulpits in churches of St. Paul 
from which the Crucified is preached. 

The maps of the Roman Empire, being generally on 
a small scale, can only indicate the most important 
places. Almost without exception the places connected 
with Paul are such as are marked on even the smallest 
map. Names of villages and small towns such as 
appear out of the mists of oblivion in the Gospel 
records and cause such terrible annoyance to the 
philosophical writers, who at the present day en- 
deavour to prove that Jesus was a myth and never 
lived, because their names never occur in the Talmud 
or in Tacitus, are almost completely absent from the 
records of Paul. The Market of Appius and the Three 
Taverns* are only mentioned as stations on the road 
from Puteoli to Rome. 

It is only another way of expressing the same 
observation when I add that, since the modernisation 
of the means of communication in the Mediterranean 
world almost all the important places visited by Paul 
can be reached either by steamer or railway or by 
both means of communication. Disregarding those 
which the Apostle merely touched in passing, the 
following places connected with Paul are to-day on the 
railway: Tarsus, Jerusalem, Damascus and ‘ Arabia,’ 
Iconium (Konieh), Phrygia, Galatia, Ephesus (Ayaso- 

1 Vitruvius i. 7, Mercurio autem in foro. 


2 Acts xiv. 12. 
’ Appii Forum and the Three Taverns (A.V.), Acts xxviii. 15. 





PAUL THE APOSTLE 229 


luk), Laodicea (Gonjeli) with Colossee and Hierapolis, 
Beroea (Verria), Rome. We find ports for steamers 
in Cyprus, Ake Ptolemais, Neapolis in Macedonia 
(Kavala), Nicopolis (Paleo-Prevesa), Crete, Malta. 
There are approaches by both rail and steamer to 
Thessalonica (Salonika), Athens-Pirzeus and Corinth. 
The only place of first-rate importance in Paul’s life 
which is still wanting on these lists is Antioch on the 
Orontes; but without doubt this ancient centre will 
also soon be linked up with the modern lines of com- 
munication. 

Of course the European companies who invested 
their capital in these means of communication, did not 
speculate on the few scholars who might wish to follow 
the footsteps of Paul, but steamer lines and railways 
have to obey the geographical conditions which deter- 
mine the lines of communication, and these are essenti- 
ally the same as they were when the ancient routes by 
water and land accommodated themselves to them. 


In looking at the evangelist of the great ancient 
cities, one thing alone seems peculiar, that Paul should — 
never have gone to Egypt, especially to Alexandria the 
international head-quarters of the Jews of the Dis- 
persion. Apart from voyages in Alexandrian ships ‘— | 
one of which bore the name ‘The Dioscuri’’—the 
only connection of which we know between Paul 
and Alexandria is very indirect. The Alexandrian, 
Apollus, after Paul had left Corinth, worked in the 
church there,? and Paul thankfully recognised this 
work as the continuation of his own gardener’s work 
there.* 

I have no perfectly clear explanation to offer why 
Paul, who was once taken for an Egyptian,’ did not go 


1 Acts xxvii. 6; xxviii. 11. 2 Acts xxviii. J1. 
3 Acts xix. 1. 41 Cor. iii. 6. 5 Acts xxi. 38. 


230 PAUL 


as a missionary to Egypt. Did he regard Alexandria— 
which would have been ‘Egypt’ to him just as in the 
main Corinth with its environs was ‘Achaia’? and 
Ephesus with its environs was ‘ Asia’*—did he regard 
Alexandria on account of its enormous Jewish popula- 
tion, as belonging not to Gentile countries, but to the 
‘circumcision, * and thus as Peter’s mission field ?* 
He is jealously concerned that every missionary should 
have his own province and not go beyond it,’ and in 
particular he had no doubt faithfully kept to his com- 
pact with the ‘pillar apostles.’° Or had other Christian 
missionaries already been in Egypt at an early date ? 
Unfortunately we are quite in the dark about the 
beginnings of Egyptian Christianity. 

The most probable answer seems to me to be as 
follows: The Jewish persecutions in Alexandria’ 
which broke out and culminated in a bloody pogrom 
in the year 38, just at the time when Paul’s missionary 
work was beginning, made a mission in Egypt to begin 
with an actual impossibility * and drove Paul towards 


19 Cor. ix. 2, ete. 2Rom. xvi. 5. 
3 Gal. ii. 9. 4 Tohid. 
62 Cor. x, Lowes Om Xk Venue 6 Gal. ii. 9. 


7Cf. on this point Schiirer, Geschichte des jiidischen Volkes, i., 
3rd and 4th Hd. (1901), p. 495 ff; A. von Premerstein, Zu den 
sogenannten alexandrinischen Mdrtyrerakten, Philologus, Additional 
Volume 16, Part II. (1923), pp. 4 f. and 11 f.; and H. I. Bell on 
p- 16 ff. of the work mentioned in the next note. 

8This guess has now risen to be a certainty tome. The newly 
discovered letters of the Emperor Claudius to the Alexandrians 
(A.D. 41), London, Papyrus No. 1912, 96 f. (published by H. Idris 
Bell in Jews and Christians in Egypt, London (1924), p. 25, contains 
a direct warning to the Alexandrian Jews, that they were not to ally 
with themselves or welcome Jews who came from Syria or Egypt (unde 
éerdyeo Oat ) tpoceleo Oar ard Supias 7 Aiyir(r)ov KatarAéovras “Iovdaious). 
This is equivalent to an imperial prohibition of the entry of Syrian 
Jews. That it still seemed necessary in the year 4.D. 41, shows how 
long the dangerous situation in Egypt lasted. Thus Paul had no 


PAUL THE APOSTLE 231 


the North and West, even if he had intended to do 
missionary work in the South. Later on, when Egypt 
was again quiet, no doubt other persons’ evangelised 
there. 

But even without Egypt Paul’s sphere of work is of 
unparalleled extent. 


What was it that drove this man out into the 
world @ 

The experience at Damascus was fundamental for 
Paul, as a missionary, as for much else. ‘The con- 
version was not only the transformation of an enemy of 
Christ into a friend of Christ but also the transforma- 
tion of an apostle of Pharisaic-Judaism * into an apostle 
of Christ. It was the revulsion not only of a religious 
consciousness, but also of a special consciousness of a 
mission, whose content is reflected in the proud words 
of the Epistle to the Romans to which reference has 
been already made.* Paul himself confided to the 
Galatians‘ that Damascus had this double meaning for 
him: the revelation of the living Christ within him, and 
the obligation to preach that Christ as a gospel to the 
nations. 

Elsewhere too we have numerous proofs of his 
powerful consciousness of a mission. His language 


‘open door’ (1 Cor. xvi. 9; 2 Cor. ii. 12 [Col. iv. 3]). v. Premerstein, 
p. 6 f., furthermore thinks that already at that time a passport (which 
was called the émdéaroAos!) was required for the outward journey from 
Alexandria to the sea. Intercourse with Alexandria was in other ways 
also made difficult for a private person. ; 

11 may be concluded from 1 Cor. ix. 6, that Barnabas continued 
to work as a missionary till the middle of the fifties. The later tra- 
dition in the Clementine Homilies makes Barnabas go to Alexandria. 
Apart from that as a missionary to the heathen he had not much 
‘place’ (Rom. xv. 23). 

2 Cf. above, p. 128 ff. 

3 Rom. ii. 19, 20; cf. above, p. 93 f. and p. 226 f. 

4Gal. i. 16; cf. Eph. iii. 1-7; 1 Tim.i. 11. 


232 PAUL 


becomes solemn with the tone of a religious cult when 
he speaks of his mission. He is the ‘slave’ who works 
in the service of his Master. He is, because of grace 
given to him, 

a minister of Christ Jesus to the Gentiles, ministering the 


Gospel of God, that the offering up of the Gentiles might be made 
acceptable.? 


He is one of the evangelists of good things foreseen 
by the prophet whose footsteps are beautiful ;* he is a 
‘herald and apostle, a teacher of the Gentiles.’* He 
can even say : 


We are ambassadors therefore on behalf of Christ, 
As though God were intreating by us: | 
We beseech you on behalf of Christ, 

Be ye reconciled to God.° 


Against opponents who attacked his mission he especi- 
ally defended himself as an apostle who was in no wise 
behind the others.° Even the remorseful thought that 
he was ‘the least of the apostles,’ ‘not worthy to be 
called an apostle,’ because he persecuted the church of 
God,’ could be overcome by the certainty : ° 


By the grace of God I am what I am. 


11 Cor. iv. 1; ix.17; Col. i. 23% 2 Cor. y. 18; vi04: Bom. aedeenes 

“Rom. xv. 15 £,, dia rv xdpw rv Sobcicdy por dard Tod Ge08, cis 7d 
civat pe Aetroupyov Xpictod ‘Incod cis rd Ovy, tepovpyodvra 75 evayyéhwov 
Tod Geod, wa yévntar 7 tpoopopa Tov ébvaev edrpdabeKTos. 

* Rom, x. 15 (UXX, Isa. lii. 7), ds dpator of rédes rv edaryyeAcLopévew 
Ta ayaba, 

*1 Tim. ii. 7, éya «ppv cat dardéatodos . . . diddoKados ebvav. Of. 
Aylin sill’ 

°2 Cor. v. 20, ixép Xpicrod oty rperBevomev, ds TOD Oeod wapaKxadodv- 
Tos Ov nudv. dedpeba brép Xpiorod KataA\dynre TO O6. 

° specially in Galatians and second Corinthians. 

"1 Cor. xv. 9, ey yap eis 6 €tdyuotos tov drooTdAwr, bs ovK eit 
ixavos KadetoOar drdatodos, didte ediwka THV éxkAnaiav TOD Oeod. 


© 1 Cor. xv. 10, xdpure 8 Oeod eiul 6 ctu. 


PAUL THE APOSTLE 233 


Most moving of all are those words to the Corinth- 


lans :* 
Necessity is laid upon me! 
Woe is unto me if I preach not the Gospel. 


The Apostle’s consciousness of his mission is strength- 
ened by his hope of the end ; the time is short,’ salvation 
is at the door ;* now is the time to prepare the world 
for the new state of things. 

Nevertheless the ‘debtor both to Greeks and to 
Barbarians, both to the wise and to the foolish ’* 
occasionally confesses that he entered a new field of 
work with anxiety: 


And I was with you in weakness, and in fear, and in much 
trembling.® 


And what depth of feeling there is in the picture con- 
jured up by the words 


At Athens alone.® 


So that even Paul’s consciousness of his mission had 
its ebb and flow. 


By combining the occasional references in Paul’s 
letters with the narrative in the Acts we can gain a very 
incomplete,” but in the main trustworthy picture of 
Paul’s missionary labours. Some of the gaps can be 
filled up from the material for social history furnished by 
the world of his day, and if we travel in Paul’s footsteps 
to-day we find that in some things this remains still 


11 Cor. ix. 16; cf. above, p. 223. 

BIRUOr AVI 29, 3 Rom, xiii. 11 f. 

4Rom. i, 14, "EAAnow te cat BapBapo.s, copots te Kal dvonros ddet- 
Nerys cipi. 

°1 Cor. ii. 3, Kayo év dobeveia kat &v PdBw Kal év Tpduw TONG eye- 
VOUNV pos buas. 

61 Thess. iii. 1, ev “A@jvaus povor. 

7Cf. especially the references in 2 Cor. xi. 23-33 for only a small 
part of which we have other evidence. 


234 PAUL 


unchanged. Even the apocryphal Acts of Apostles, 
though often valueless as history, give us material for 
social history, illustrating the manner of travelling and 
its difficulties, adventures on the road and at inns—in 
short, the light and atmosphere of the ancient East. 
For example, the excellent Acts of John portray in a 
direct and vivid manner the wandering life of a primitive 
Christian missionary, and enable the modern traveller, 
if he possesses a sense of humour, to smile even at the 
discomforts of the worst night-quarters. 

Our knowledge of the Apostle’s sea voyages is 
especially imperfect. The Gospel which first sounded 
forth on the sunny sea of Gennesareth for fishermen 
and boatmen, continued to love the rhythm of oars and 
the wind-filled sail. And where at other times the rude 
religion of seamen had confided in Asclepius and Serapis 
or even in the God of Abraham,' now the youthful 
Christ the Lord made hearts strong in the midst of the 
howling storms of the Mediterranean,’ and called for 
the fervent blessing on the hard ship’s bread.’ Paul 
must often have been on the sea; even before his last 
voyage to Jerusalem * he was able to look back on three 
shipwrecks, of which we have no knowledge from other 
sources. Of so much the more value to us is the one 
picture of the voyage to Rome in the two last chapters 
of Acts. With its lively description of what is purely 
nautical and the wonderful adventures of the ship- 
wrecked party it is a little apostolic Odyssey, only it is 


1Cf. for instance the fine inscriptions put up by sailors in the 
‘Harbour of Letters’ on the island of Syros, beginning with the 
Imperial period (Inscriptiones Grecae, xii., 5, No. 712). The heathen 
inscriptions are followed by Jewish and finally by Christian, a unique 
exhibition of the continuity of ancient religious feeling in the Mediter- 
ranean. On Serapis as a rescuer from perils of the sea, cf. also the 
letter of Apion, a soldier in the marine service, Licht vom Osten, 
4th Ed., p. 145 ff. 

* Acts xxvii. 21 ff. 3 Acts xxvil. 30. 42 Cor. xi. 25. 


PAUL THE APOSTLE 235 


certainly no fiction but the product of real experiences 
in the soul of a man of the ancient world, a companion 
of Paul, and for that reason a unique document for the 
social history of the Roman imperial period. 

In describing the experiences of Paul, the missionary, 
on land the writer of the Acts of the Apostles also 
shows a happy and as arule trustworthy touch, although 
he is less fond of a sober white light than of the play of the 
seven colours. The popular tumult in the theatre at 
Ephesus,’ the events connected with the arrest of Paul at 
Jerusalem,” these and other scenes, in which the crowd 
was roused to blood-thirsty passions, are set forth in sharp 
relief when we view them in the light of present-day 
religious conditions in the Orient. The same fanaticism 
what once made Paul a persecutor, and afterwards 
caused him to be stoned himself,? has smouldered on 
there till to-day and breaks out again and again in 
bloody massacres. 


The financial basis of the missionary journeys was 
the simplest imaginable. Paul had few wants, and the 
Master’s divinely plain words of instruction concerning 
the equipment of His messengers* were doubtless not 
unknown to him. 

Probably he travelled as a rule on foot ;° only once 


1 Acts xix. 23 ff. 2 Acts xxi. 27 ff. 

3 Acts xiv. 19; 2 Cor. xi. 25. 

4 Mark vi. 8 ff. and parallels, cf. note 5 below, and as contrast the 
caravans of the beggar-apostles of the Syrian goddess, Licht vom Osten., 
4th Ed., p. 87. 

5 Only once indeed, Acts xx. 18, is it expressly mentioned, cf. 
below, p. 237. But also it is the natural thing, especially in the light 
of the words of Jesus at the sending out of the twelve. His command 
(Matt. x. 14, cf. Lk. ix. 5; x. 11), which Paul and Barnabas literally 
followed after their banishment from Pisidian Antioch (Acts xiii. 51), 
presupposes that the Apostles went on foot, similarly that they went 
staff in hand (though the testimony for this is uncertain, Mark vi, 8, 
against it Matt. x. 10 and Lk. ix. 3). Gregory, the well-remembered, 


236 PAUL 


do our authorities tell us that he rode, namely, when he 
was taken from Jerusalem to Caesarea on the sea-coast.* 
The painters who were fond of giving an aristocratic air 
to primitive Christianity have given Paul—mistakenly 
I think—a proud steed in the Damascus scene,” just as 
on Mar’s Hill they delight to depict him clothed in 
classical drapery—as though that were necessary. The 
real Paul had the simple coat and the rough sandals of 
the pedestrian ; if he needed an inn, no roomy caravan- 
sary had to open its doors for his hungry saddle horses ; 
the simplest shelter sufficed, and the wearied traveller 
was thankful if hospitable hands were ready to wash 
his dusty feet.* He seems even to have preferred going 
on foot to travelling by sea: on his last journey to 
Jerusalem he left the ship at (Alexandria) Troas and 
went on foot to Assos where his travelling companions 
then welcomed him on board ship again.* His luggage 
would be of the smallest ; once indeed he left with a 
friend Carpus at (Alexandria) Troas, not only his Bible- 
rolls and papers, but also the cloak, which is often so 
necessary even for summer nights in Anatolia.’ 

He travelled also without any family. While other 
Apostles, including the brothers of Jesus and Peter, 
were accompanied on these journeys by their wives,’ 
Paul for his own part, without wishing to impose a 


travelled in thoroughly apostolic style (cf. above, p. 29, note 1), as most 
visitors to Bible lands have done. | 

1 Acts xxi. 24, 31 f. 

2The words of the Acts point directly against this. While the 
ring of the horse’s hoof sounds through the whole (aristocratic) O.T., 
there are no horses in the N.T. (with the exception of the Roman 
escort of Paul, Acts xxiii. 23, 32, and the common-place reference in 
James iii. 3), but those in the visions of the Revelation of John. Jesus 
rode on an ass. On this subject cf. 8. Krauss, Revue des études 
juives, 63 (1912), p. 67 f£.; correct and incorrect in Origen, cf. von 
Harnack, Texte und Untersuchungen, 42-3, p. 49. 

Simian. * Acts xx. 18, 14. 

6.2) Tim, iy: 13. 6/1 Gor, 1x20. 


PAUL THE APOSTLE 237 


prohibition on others, renounced marriage,’ no doubt to 
some extent under the influence of his hopes of the end 
of the world. Moreover, he abstained of his own free 
will from exercising a right that was by others generally 
admitted * and was backed by the authoritative words 
of Jesus,* the right of a missionary to be supported by 
the churches.’ 

What he needed he earned by his own work as 
journeyman tent-maker. He was the first artisan 
missionary, and was proud of his independence : 

It were good for me rather to die, than that any man should 

make my glorying void.® 

His churches were poor, and he would not be a burden 
to them.’ He retorts with cuttingly sharp sarcasm 
when his opponents accuse him of basely seeking his 
own advantage.* Only from those who were very near 
to him did he, making an exception to his rule, receive 
charitable gifts.° 


It was through his handicraft, too, that he occasion- 
ally gained his first acquaintanceship and perhaps lodging 
in a strange city. His association at Corinth, and after- 
wards at Ephesus, with the family of Aquila and 
Priscilla, tent-makers, is typical.’ These two apostolic 
Christians, widely travelled like himself, were of the 
greatest possible service to Paul, the missionary ; they 
once rescued him from a most desperate situation at the 
risk of their own lives.” 


PMOL vil, 3: 21 Cor. vii. 26; cf. above, p. 219. 
> 1 Gore ix: 4: ff. 4 Matt, x. 10; Lk. x. 7; also 1 Cor. ix, 14 
See Gorsik. LO, 6 Ibid. 


71 Thess. ii. 9; 2 Cor. xi. 9, ete. 

89 Cor. xi. 7 ff.; xii. 13 ff.; cf. above, p. 68 ff 

Eevee LOL. 18: 2 Cor. xi. 9. 

10 Acts xviii. 2; cf. below in Appendix I. 

11 Rom. xvi. 3 f., cf. on this point, Licht vom Osten., 4th Hd., 
p. 94 £ 


238 PAUL 


From the house in which he found lodging, Paul no 
doubt as a rule’ went on the Sabbath to the synagogue 
in order to effect something by the spoken word. The 
Acts of the Apostles, which reports many such visits 
to the synagogue,’ is here certainly not incredible. If 
Paul had not worked within the organisation of the 
synagogue, how otherwise could the frequent punish- 
ments* be explained which he suffered at the hands 
of the synagogue authorities ? 

In the synagogue Paul found the Septuagint and 
people who were under the influence of the religion of 
the Septuagint, Jews, Gentiles and proselytes. The 
‘Gentiles’ whom Paul won over, came no doubt largely 
from those circles who were already under Jewish 
influence, from the proselytes or half-proselytes. The 
alternative which has often been formulated in con- 
nection with the question of the composition of his 
churches: ‘Jewish Christians or Gentile Christians,’ 
is too narrow. ‘There were also Gentile Jewish Chris- 
tians who had been originally Gentiles, then became 
Jews and finally Christians. 

But it was not only in the synagogue that Paul 
sought for converts. In the streets; in the market- 
place,* in the lecture halls, for example ‘in the school 
of Tyrannus’ at Ephesus,’ and even in prison, ‘in bonds,’ 
he on occasion did successful mission work : ° 


The word of God is not bound.’ 


1 Acts xvii. 2, ‘as his custom was.’ 

2 Acts xiii. 5 (Salamis in Cyprus), 14 (Antioch in Pisidia); xiv. 1 
(Iconium); xvii. 2 (Thessalonica), 10 (Beroea), 17 (Athens); xviii. 4 
(Corinth), 19 (Ephesus) ; xix. 8 (Ephesus). 

32 Cor. xi. 24; cf. above, p. 61 f. 

4 Acts xvii. 17. 

5 Acts xix. 9, év tH cxoAH Tupavvov. 

6 Philem. 10; Phil. i. 12 f.; cf. Acts xvi. 33; and above, p. 19, 

72 Tim. ii. 9, 6 Adyos Tod Geod od déderar. 


PAUL THE APOSTLE 239 


In quiet times he was naturally also at people’s 
disposal in his dwelling,’ and he must often enough 
have been pressed by business and surrounded with 
visitors.” Where he worked for any length of time the 
news quickly got about that the preacher of the Gospel 
could work miracles: cloths which he had touched 
were credited with the power of healing diseases and 
driving out demons,’ and he himself occasionally can 
recall acts of power—he calls them ‘the signs of an 
apostle ’*—-which accredited him as a genuine apostle.’ 


He gathered around himself gradually quite a 
number of helpers for his missionary work. While 
his first companion, Barnabas,°® was at least his equal 
in authority, the later associates were distinctly 
subordinate to him. They shared his great work as 
fellow travellers (Paul says pleasantly ‘companions 
abroad’’), letter-writers,* letter-carriers,’ personal re- 
presentatives,”” and of course, also as evangelists and 
teachers." In difficult situations he was able to rely 
upon them; the unreliability of John Mark in Pam- 
phylia” or that of Demas, who once, obviously against 
the will of the Apostle, went to Thessalonica,” was no 
doubt a rare exception. What an attractive personality, 


1 Acts xxviii. 30 f. 2 COL xt 40. # Acts xix. LUM. 

49 Cor. xii. 12, ra onpeta Tod adrroorodov. 

5In Galatia (Gal. iii. 5), in Corinth (2 Cor. xii. 12 and 1 Cor. ii. 4) ; 
generally, Rom. xv. 19. No doubt the references are to healing of 
diseases most especially. 

6 Acts 1x.-xv. 72 Cor. viii. 19, cvvéxdypos. 

8 For example Tertius, Rom. xvi. 22. 

®Titus probably took a letter—now lost—to Corinth (2 Cor. vii. 
6-9), probably also our second letter to the Corinthians (2 Cor. viii. 
MADE 

101 Cor. xvi. 10; 2 Cor. viii. 23. 

at Cokin’ ; 2:Cor. i. 19. 

12 Acts xiii, 138; xv. 37 ff. 139 Tim. iv. 10. 


240 PAUL 


for example, is that of Titus, who in a time of passion- 
ately strained relations, by his tactful and firm inter- 
vention, brought the Corinthian Church back into order 
after its disturbance by agitators.’ 

Paul was fond of coining expressive names full of 
personal feeling for these helpers—Timothy, Tychicus, 
Titus (who has just been mentioned), Silvanus, Aquila 
and Priscilla, Urbanus, Epaphroditus, Euodia, Syntyche, 
Clemens, Philemon, Mark, Aristarchus, Demas, Luke 
the physician, and others. He calls them familiarly 
‘fellow-workers,’ 2a term borrowed from the workshop ; 
in a spirit of comradeship the champion of Christ speaks 
to them as ‘fellow-soldiers,’ * or using a rougher meta- 
phor he calls them ‘yokefellows,* with a playful 
reference perhaps to the words about oxen treading out 
the corn, which he had applied to the Apostles. 
Looking to the one Master in common, his helpers are 
his ‘fellow-slaves,’® but just because they are in the 
service of that Master they are to the churches the 
reflected ‘glory of Christ.’ The recollection of im- 
prisonment suffered together, causes him to coin the 
honourable title of ‘fellow-captive’* for Aristarchus * 
and Epaphras,”” Andronicus and Junias." Phoebe, the 
Christian woman of Cenchree, the port of Corinth, 
who had done much for his welfare, is singled out for 
distinction as his ‘patroness,’” and the mother of his 
friend Rufus, he calls his ‘mother,’* a plain hearty 
way of showing his respect. 


1'Traces of this are to be seen all through, 2 Cor. ii., vil., viii. 

2 cyvepyds, 1 Cor. iii. 9; Phil. ii, 25; iv. 3; Philem. 1, 24; 2 Cor. 
Vill. 235, Rom. xvi. 9, 9, 21. 

3 svorpariworys, Phil. ii. 25; Philem. 2. 

4 ovévyos, Phil. iv. 3. 

51 Cor. ix. 9 f.; 1 Tim. v.18; cf. above, p. 102. 


6 givdovAos, Col. i. 7; Iv. 7. 7 §6€a, Xprorod, 2 Cor. viii. 23. 
8 cuvatxpudrwros, 9 Col. iv. 10. 
10 Philem. 23. 11 Rom. xvi. 7. 


2 rpootatis, Rom, xvi. 2, 13 Rom. xvi. 13. 


PAUL THE APOSTLE 241 


What a vast deal lies hidden behind these brief 
names! How many experiences, how much endurance, 
how much brotherhood! The emotional strength 
especially which pulses in these names was one of the 
magic charms wielded by Paul, the leader of men. His 
influence upon the common people depended not least 
on his ability to arouse the slumbering forces in the 
souls of the simplest by the hearty directness of his 
appeal as man to man. 

All these associates in the Apostle’s work were, like 
himself, men of exceptional activity. If we were to 
mark on the map the routes of all their journeys which 
are known to us, the lines would almost make a laby- 
rinth, but we should feel all the more clearly how the 
Anatolian world was set thrilling by the trumpet blasts 
of the evangelists : 


The word of the Lord runneth. 4 


The people whose souls were moved by the mission 
of Paul and his faithful companions were—the over- 
whelming majority at least—men and women from the 
middle and lower classes : 


Not many wise after the flesh, 

Not many mighty, 

Not many noble ! 

But the foolish things of the world 
Hath God chosen, 

To put to shame them that are wise. 
And the weak things of the world 
Hath God chosen, 

To put to shame the things that are strong. 
And the. base things of the world, 
And the things that are despised, 
Hath God chosen. 

And the things that are not, 

To bring to nought the thing that are. 


12 Thess, iii. 1, va 6 Adyos Tod Kupiov TpExy. 


16 


242 PAUL 


In these lines,’ ringing like a song of defiance and in- 
spired by the defensive pride which longs for the fray, 
Paul sufficiently well described the social structure of 
the church of Corinth. It has already been hinted’ 
that even the holes and corners of the slums of this 
cosmopolitan city had witnessed conversions. It 
appears from the scenes at the Lord’s Supper depicted * 
by Paul that some of the poor saints at Corinth 
occasionally ‘had nothing’* at all: instead of sharing 
the food which they had brought with them in a 
brotherly way, and waiting to eat till all were supplied, 
_many devoured their own supplies with greedy haste, 
and those who had nothing were obliged to go hungry. 
The terrible seriousness of Paul’s way of dealing with 
this desecration of the Lord’s Supper’ enables us to 
divine that his sympathy was with the hungry. 

Paul also speaks of the ‘deep poverty’ of the 
churches of Macedonia (Philippi, Thessalonica,B ercea).° 
And the advice he gives to the assemblies of the 
Galatian Christians to raise the collection for the 
brethren at Jerusalem gradually in small amounts every 
Sunday’ (the touching prototype of the copper col- 
lections for missions which have been so richly blessed 
amongst us), is a proof that in the interior of Asia 
Minor, where money was even rarer than in the coast 
cities, in spite of their better earnings, the churches 
were still poor. Even in places where Paul had not per- 


11 Cor. i. 26-28, 0d zoAXoi codot Kara cdpKa, ov ToAXOl Suvaroé, ov 
ToAAot edvyevets* GAAG TA pupa TOD Kdapov e&eAeato 6 Heds, va KaTaocxivy 
Tovs copovs: kal Ta dobevn Tod Kdcpov eeAeEato 6 Oeds Wa Kataicxvvy Ta 
ioxupa* Kal TA ayevn TOD Kdapov Kal TA eEovdevnpeva eLerACEaTo 6 eds, Ta 
py) ovTa va Ta OvTa Katapynoy. One of Paul’s greatest creations, an 
echo of Mati. xi. 25. 

4 Above, p. 69. 31 Cor. xi. 20-22, 33 ff. 

41 Cor, xi. 22, rods x exovras. 51 Cor. xi. 20-84. 

62 Cor. viii. 2, 7 kata Badous rrwyela adrav. 


“1 Cor. xvi. 1 f. Cf. Licht vom Osten, 4th Ed., p. 309. 


PAUL“THE APOSTLE 243 


sonally conducted a mission it is probable that the slave 
element, for instance, was more strongly represented 
than that of the slave-owning freemen: In Colosse 
and Laodicea ‘masters’ receive only one short exhor- 
tation,’ while the slaves, on the other hand, have a 
whole string of commands and promises ;” in this there 
is a reflection of the social structure of these churches.* 

On the other hand, Paul mentions by name certain 
fairly well-to-do Christians. Those who possessed a 
room so large that ‘house churches’ could assemble 
there for edification as was the case with Aquila at 
Ephesus,* Nymphas and others at Laodicea,> Philemon 
at Colosse,® cannot have been poor, and Gaius at Corinth 
who even offered the hospitality of his house to the 
whole church,’ must, along with his fellow-citizen, 
Erastus,® the city treasurer, have belonged to the 
middle class. It is noteworthy that several women 
whose names are honourably mentioned in connection 
with Paul’s missionary labours, appear to have been 
possessed of means: Chloé apparently in Corinth,’ 
Phoebe at Cenchrez, the port of Corinth,’? Lydia in 
Philippi, who came from Asia Minor." Other Mace- 
donian women of the upper clases, considerable numbers 
of whom seem at first to have been enthusiastic for the 
Gospel (at Thessalonica women of the ‘first’ circles,” 
and in Beroea ‘Greek women of honourable estate ’*), 
seem later on to have lost their ‘first love’*; otherwise 


gocobatva Ls tp. vi. 9, 

2 Col. iii, 22-25; Eph. vi. 5-8. 

8On this whole subject cf. my work, Das Urchristentum und die 
unteren Schichten, Gottingen, 1908. 


Secor. xvi, 195: Kom. xyi..d: 5 Col. iv. 15. 

6 Philem. 2. 7 Rom. xvi. 23. 
8 Thid. 2 Corsi UL 
10 Rom. xvi. 1 f.; cf. above, p. 240. 

1 Acts xvi. 4. 12 Acts xvii. 4. 


18 Acts xvii. 12. 14 Rey. i. 4. 


244 PAUL 


it is difficult to understand the ‘deep poverty’ of the 
Macedonian churches later on.!’ In Antioch in Pisidia, 
it is to be noted, that it was the honourable women 
who allowed themselves to be degraded as the instru- 
ments of persecution against Paul and Barnabas.’ 


The subject matter of Paul’s mission preaching is 
Christ exalted on the Cross,’ the living Christ, the 
Crucified,* with an especial emphasis on the near 
approach of the completed Kingdom of God, and with 
strong ethical demands.’ Everything was presented at 
first with the greatest possible simplicity : 

I fed you with milk, not with meat; for ye were not able} to 

bear it.6 

But then the treasures of those ‘riches in Christ’? of 
which we spoke in an earlier chapter were gradually 
opened out, and those unknown people, whom chance 
had thrown together in the slums of the cosmopolitan 
city, became members of ‘the body of Christ,’ ’ 

enriched in Him, in all utterance and in all knowledge.® 


To some extent they appear to have been true 
revival churches, zealously held together by Paul, if 
necessary by sharp discipline,’ but also by showing 
that he had great confidence in them." <A letter sent 


12 Cor. viii. 2. 2 Acts xiii. 50. 
*John xii. 32, 33; iii. 14; viii, 28; cf. above, p. 197. 
4Gal. ui. 1, ete. °Cf. Gal. v. 21, apoetrov. 


° 1 Cor. iii, 2, ydAa duels érdrica, 0d Bpdua: obra yap edvvacde. 

" Hph. ii. 8 (cf. above, p. 161 f.). 

®1 Cor, xii. 27 (etc.), duets dé ore Bua Xprorod. 

°1 Cor. i. 5, &y wavri éwAouricbyre év aita, ev ravrt Aoyw kal racy 
yore. . 

Of. especially 1 Cor. v. 1 ff., devoting the incestuous person to 
Satan (Licht vom Osten, 4th Ed., p. 256 ff.), or 2 Cor. xiii. 2, or 1 Cor. 
xvi. 22. On the other hand, after he has been very severe Paul 
counsels a return to the right path, 2 Cor: ii. 5-11. 

“ Cf. e.g. 1 Thess. iv. 9 ff, the words addressed to those who are 
‘taught by God’ at Thessalonica. 


PAUL THE APOSTLE 245 


to Corinth, but now lost, proves what an effect his 
personal authority had upon them :! 


For behold this self-same thing, that ye were made sorry? after 
a godly sort, what earnest care it wrought in you, what clearing 
of yourselves, yea, what indignation, yea, what fear, yea, what 
longing, yea, what zeal, yea, what avenging ! 


One reflects with astonishment, on hearing words 
like these, so delicate in their psychological discrimina- 
tion, what extraordinary confidence Paul must have 
had in the receptiveness and responsiveness of the poor 
people of Corinth. 

In preaching Christ to Jews, no doubt the appeal 
was made to proof from Scripture (the Septuagint), so 
to Pagans there was an occasional allusion to the divine 
wisdom enshrined in the words of the poets: both 
methods are vouched for by doubtless trustworthy 
records in the Acts of the Apostles. 

The effect of this mission preaching must have been 
powertul and often even sudden. Paul’s own descrip- 
tion of the impression made by prophetic utterance 
upon the hearers* undoubtedly reflects the personal 
experiences of the prophet missionary and revivalist 
preacher. A stranger, perhaps an unbeliever, comes 
into the assembly and hears what is being said by the 
prophet who speaks in the spirit. Suddenly he sees his 
own inner life, the most secret thoughts of his heart 
unveiled by the spirit-filled preacher’s exhortation to 
repentance, and as if struck by lightning he falls down 
before God confessing as he falls: 


God is among you indeed ! 


19 Cor. yii. 11, id0b yap airo rotro 76 Kata Oedv AvTYPHVaL ToonV 
KaTnpydcato tyiv orovdiy, dAAG arodoylay, GAAG ayavdxtnow. 4rd hdoBov, 
GANG érimdbnow, GAG Cirov, GAAG exdiknow. Cf. above, p. 67. 

*« Made sorry’ by the letter above mentioned. 

$1 Cor.:xiv. 24 f. 


246 PAUL 


When detained in Galatia by sickness the Apostle’s 
reception had been nothing short of enthusiastic.’ 

On the other hand, Paul encountered the most 
serious obstacles, chiefly from the agitation stirred up 
by Jewish-Christian apostles of legalistic bent, who 
followed him on his journeys and tried to set his 
churches against him both by personal efforts and by 
letter.2 To these ‘false brethren, * these ‘dogs and 
evil workers, * who shrank from no malicious action, 
Paul was indebted for some of his most anxious hours. 
We are indebted to them for occasioning several of 
Paul’s most valuable letters. But he also suffered 
much at the hands of Jews whose devotion to the Law 
led to denunciations and infliction of punishment in the 
synagogues, and even the business instincts of heathen 
religion were roused against him, as shown by the riot 
provoked by Demetrius the silversmith at Ephesus.’ 


The missionary journeys were not anxiously planned 
out beforehand in every detail.° Of course Paul did 
not travel at haphazard; his aim was naturally the 
districts opened up by the ancient main roads, and 
especially the cities with Jewish colonies. He had in 
his head a map of the Jewish Dispersion. In some 
cities he had no doubt family’ or tribal * connections 
and he availed himself of them. But he willingly 
allowed himself to be turned aside from the regular 


1 Gal. iv. 13 ff. 29 Thess. ii. 2,15; 2 Cor. iii. 1. 

§ Gal. ii. 4, rods WevdadeAgous. 

4 Phil. ili. 2, rods Kivas, Tods Kakovs épyaras. 

5 Acts xix. 23 ff. 

6 Cf. Erich Stange, Pawlinische Reiseplane, Gitersloh, 1918. 

7In Jerusalem Paul had a nephew, Acts xxii. 16 (cf. above, p. 89 
and p. 109). 

8Cf. the cvyyevets Andronicus, Junias, and Herodion in Ephesus, 
Rom. xvi. 7, 11, and the cvyyevets Lucius, Jason, and Sosipater, who 
were with him in Corinth, Rom. xyi. 21. 


PAUL THE APOSTLE 247 


route by a sudden inspiration’ and driven on towards 
new goals. No doubt he often experienced what he 
bade his faithful followers pray for :* 


A great door and effectual is opened * unto me! 


The great lines of his missionary Journeys are com- 
paratively speaking clear. 

After the Damascus-experience he first went to 
‘Arabia.’ Whether he actually began his missionary 
work there is not certain. That he then sketched out 
the system of Paulinism is quite improbable! What is 
likely is that he earnestly desired a time of quiet re- 


collection. Then, after a short stay in Jerusalem, he | 


worked as missionary in Syria and Cilicia, that is for the 
most part in Antioch on the Orontes and in his native 
city of Tarsus, and after that in company with Barnabas 
in Cyprus, in Pamphylia, Pisidia and Lycaonia. 

Then there follows, after another short visit to Jeru- 
salem, the most important of his journeys as judged by 
its effects: from Antioch on the Orontes via Tarsus 
through the Cilician Gates of the Taurus mountains to 
Lycaonia, Phrygia, and Galatia. Here in the ancient 
country of Galatia, according to my opinion, the churches, 
to which the letter to the Galatians was addressed, are 
to be located.t The intention of evangelising western 
Asia Minor and Bithynia, where there was a large Jewish 
population, was overruled by the Spirit. The Apostle 
felt that he was guided to cross the sea, and he went 
from (Alexandria) Troas by ship to Macedonia, where 


1Gal. ii. 2; Acts xvi. 6, 7, 9f. (xvii. 15; xix. 1 in Codex D). 

2 Col. iv. 3. 31 Cor. xvi. 9, cf. 2 Cor. ii. 12. 

4The account of the origin of the Galatian churches given in Gal. 
iy. 13-19 simply does not fit with the data in Acts about the evangelisa- 
tion of Antioch in Pisidia, Iconium, Lystra, and Derbe, in which cities 
many would place ‘the churches of Galatia.’ Other data of Acts also 
do not fit to this South-Galatian hypothesis. A mention of the founda- 
tion of the South-Galatian churches might be expected in Gal. i. 21. 


248 PAUL 


he succeeded in founding churches in Philippi, Thessa- 
lonica, and Bercea. After an unsuccessful attempt at 
Athens he came to Corinth,’ where he secured a success 
that is all the more significant. 

A sea-voyage took him via Ephesus to Palestine, an 
overland journey to Syrian Antioch, and again through 
the Cilician Gates into the interior of Asia Minor to 
Galatia and Phrygia, till he reached Ephesus, which be- 
came for a considerable time the centre of his labours. 
We know extremely little of this Ephesian period, but 
during that time Paul must have gone through much 
more than is recorded in our fragmentary authorities. 
Some of his most important letters were written from 
Ephesus, some perhaps while he was imprisoned.2, From 
Ephesus Paul made journeys by land and sea as shown 
especially by his letters to Corinth, At Ephesus he 
underwent great suffering for his faith, and he met with 
the most loyal and self-sacrificing devotion. 

After a journey which led him ‘ through ’* Macedonia 
to Illyricum there followed a peaceful sojourn in Co- 
rinth. Paul then intended to take with him the collec- 
tion which he had gathered for the saints in Jerusalem 
to the Holy City and from thence to start for Rome and 
Spain. He did indeed journey via Macedonia and Asia 
Minor by land and water to Palestine, but was arrested 
in Jerusalem, and being taken via Ceesarea and thence by 
sea, reached Rome as a prisoner. Whether Paul after 
the two years of work there,‘ actually carried out the 
Spanish journey as planned,® remains an open question, 
but I reckon on the probability of an affirmative answer. 


‘This arrival of Paul in Corinth can now, so I believe, be fixed 
chronologically with great probability (ef. Appendix I.). 

2 Cf. above, p. 16 f. 

° When Paul at Ephesus speaks of a journey ‘through’ Macedonia 
(1 Cor. xvi. 5), we ought in the first instance to think of a journey from 
Hast to West, that is no doubt along the Via Hgnatia. 

* Acts xxviii. 30 f, ° Rom. xv. 24, 28, 


PAUL THE APOSTLE 249 


These are, of course, no more than hints. The mis- 
sionary’s own letters and the Acts of the Apostles enable 
us to illustrate the missionary work of Paul with a series 
of bright and lively pictures familiar to us all, the church 
that stands out most realistically being that of Corinth. 


I should like to call attention to just three pictures 
which are comparatively little noticed in the long series. 

First the collection for the poor saints of the mother 
church at Jerusalem. As a cause especially dear to the 
Apostle it is mentioned repeatedly in several of his 
letters,! and its characteristics become clearer when 
viewed against the background afforded by the practice 
of collections in the contemporary world.” The warmth 
of Paul’s brotherly affection, his businesslike prudence, 
his loyal observance of an agreement,’ and his delicate 
tact are all revealed in his treatment of this one matter, 
and so too the readiness of his newly founded churches 
to take action even at a sacrifice to themselves, appears 
in the best light. 

Next there is the case of the runaway slave, Onesi- 
mus,‘ which is treated in the letter to Philemon—a 
typical instance of the Apostle Paul's care for the indi- 
vidual soul. This one case teaches us better than long 
investigations could do what the secret of this mission- 
ary’s influence was. It was the suggestive power of his 
entirely trustful and entirely brotherly personality which 
bound people to him.’ 

Finally the little letter to the Christians at Ephesus, 
preserved in the sixteenth chapter of Romans, shows 
what Paul, the missionary, made of these people. There 
he stands amidst his faithful friends, united with them 


1Tn the two Corinthian letters and in Romans. 

2 Cf. Licht vom Osten, 4th Ed., p. 83 ff. and 86 f. 

3 Gal. ii. 10. 4Cf. above, p. 19 ff. 
5 Cf. above, p. 239 ff. 


250 PAUL 


in the faith of Christ and in the sufferings of Christ, 
knowing each one, and exchanging with all a pressure 
of the hand or a friendly look—with men and women— 
from the self-sacrificing couple Priscilla and Aquila to 
Rufus and his mother, whom the Apostle thankfully 
calls his own mother.’ In all these unpretentious greet- 
ings we feel what is implied though not spoken. In 
these lines the unknown and forgotten inhabitants of 
the great city of antiquity, some by their names re- 
cognisable as slaves, are striving upwards from the dull, 
vegetating multitude, upward to the light, having be- 
come personalities, saints in Christ, Christ-intimates 
through Paul the missionary. To such souls with their 
unimpaired and sanctified powers the future belongs. 

A peculiarly kind fate has preserved for us in the 
record a ‘relic of one of these unknown persons. Paul 
had dictated that little letter to his companion Tertius, 
and then allowed him to add a line from himself. The 
permission is as characteristic of Paul as of Tertius. 
And just as we find in other letters of the ancient 
world such lines written by one who is not the sender 
—as, for example, in a letter from an Egyptian woman, 
Helena, to her brother Petechon,’ this postscript by her 
father :— 


I also, Alexander, your father, salute you much... . 


So Tertius writes :? 


I salute you, I, Tertius, who have written this letter in the 
Lord. 


In whatever way we take the words ‘in the Lord’ here 
appended like a seal—whether we construe it with ‘I 


1Cf. above, p. 240. 

2'The Oxyrhynchus Papyri, No. 1067, 3rd century A.D.: «aya 
"Ar€Eavdpos 6 r[lalrnp tudv domalopar buds ToAAG .. . 

® Rom. xvi. 22, domalomou tuds eya Téprios 6 ypdwas tiv eructoAnv év 


Kuplo. 


PAUL THE APOSTLE 251 


salute you’ or with ‘have written ’—in any case this 


line of Tertius contains the confession which may 
be described as the most fundamental in Paul’s 
vocabulary :” 

in the Lord. 


It may be called a formula repeated by a pupil—I 
am disposed to value more highly the contribution 
which Tertius unwittingly made to the New Testament. 
I see behind this line, as it were, the impress of the 
great man’s creative soul on the soul which the great 
man had awakened in the insignificant brother. Tertius 
stands before us as a type of the people who were raised 
up by Paul, the missionary, out of their dull existence in 
the mass to the One exalted upon the Cross, into the 
sphere of grace that makes all things new, into the 
hallowing fellowship with Jesus Christ the Lord. 


It is certain that Paul, the missionary, carried out 
his work with the prospect of martyrdom before his 
eyes. Once he allowed his most trusted friends, the 
Christians of eel to have a glimpse of his thoughts 
about this :° 


Yea, and if I am poured out as a drink-offering at the 
sacrifice which I minister as a priest * by the work of your faith, 
I joy and rejoice with you all. 


The presentiment was fulfilled. Paul did in fact ‘give 
his body’*® as a sacrifice of first-fruits in the great con- 
flict of world history between the Christ-cult and the 


1That is probably the more likely, cf. 1 Cor. xvi. 19. 
2 Cf. above, p. 140. 
8 Phil. ii. 17, dAAG ei Kal omTevoopaL em TH Ouoia Kai Aetoupyia THS 
TIF TEWS ULOV, Xalpw Kat ovyxaipw TACLW DLV. Cf. 2 Tim. iv. 6, and Rom. 
xv. 30 f. 
4On this cf. Rom. xy. 16 (above, p. 232). 
I 5 Cor. xii. 3. 


252 PAUL 


Ceesar-cult," in a martyr’s death he finally experienced 
the literal fulfilment of his fellowship with the suffer- 
ings and death of the Crucified. 


‘For the Jewish and apostolic emotional background of this 
conflict cf. the chapter ‘Christus und die Caesaren,’ Licht vom Osten, 
pp. 287-324. 


PAUL IN THE WORLD’S RELIGIOUS HIS- 
TORY 


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CHAPTER. XI 
PAUL IN THE WORLD’S RELIGIOUS HISTORY 


Pau the apostle’s ‘work of Christ’’ culminates in a 
martyrdom like Christ’s. Recorded with blood in the 
annals of Christianity, and mirrored to the historian in 
letters covering only a few pages, what he accomplished 
in his life irradiates the thought of the patristic and 
scholastic writers whose folios fill our libraries. 

How are we to determine (what he himself never \ 
entiipata his importance for the history of the 
world ? | 

Behind his enormous work of propagating and 
organising the Christ-cult, which all eyes can see, we 
can trace back to Paul these forces that are at work in 
the world. 

Though he was not the founder of the new cult—the 
origin of the Christ-cult is the secret of the mother 
church of Palestine—Paul entered into the mystical 
experience of Christ, which is the psychological pre- 
condition for the Christ-cult, in the primitive intensity 
of its power, and also was practically the creator of far 
the larger part of its classical forms of expression. 

His Christ-mysticism, which was in its origin a | 
reaction to revealed grace, and in its nature Christ- 
intimacy, a mysticism of fellowship, not of oneness with 
its object, ethical, not indifferent, but in the highest 
degree active—this mysticism, though centred in Christ, 
did not exclude the living God, but rather disclosed 


1 Phil. ii. 80, 76 epyov Xpucrov. 
(255) 


256 PAUL 


‘Him as Holy Love, and secured access to His 
redemptive and re-creative grace. 

Paul made this religion of Christ world-wide by 
going beyond the old Messianic, that is the specifically 
Jewish and national, appreciation of the Person of 
Jesus. Christ the Lord, Christ the Spirit—with these 
confessions made central by Paul, the ancient Aramaic 
reverence for a Messiah, transformed into a cult and at 
last separated from the Law, struggles forward to the 
position of the world religion of all nations and all 
times. 

This Christ, the Spirit and the Lord, however, 
retains the essential features of the Man Jesus, the 
poor, humiliated Jesus of the Gospel tradition, who 
served in love, who commanded with power, and at. 
last obediently suffered and was crucified. With the 
eternal wound-prints of His passion the Exalted Christ 
is ever present in the Church of His saints, and through 
the rich treasure of His living words is powertully at 
work in the individual, in the cult and in propaganda. 
Thus was Pauline Christ-intimacy, and through it 
Christianity, protected from the excesses of mytho- 
logical and theosophical imaginings, as well as from 
being hardened and deadened by dogmatic speculation. 
During well-nigh two thousand years of Christian — 
thinking upon Christ, the words of Jesus and the cross 
of Jesus have constantly been the .sign-posts visible 
from afar, which have prevented the all-to-subtle 
Christologists from completely losing their way. The 
identity insisted upon by Paul of the Crucified with the 
Living One and of the Living One with the Crucified, 
of the earthly with the heavenly and of the heavenly 
with the earthly, imparts to Christ-mysticism and the 
Christ-cult two things: ethical sobriety and enthusiastic 
fervour. 

The mere spiritual Christ, so easily liable to become 


PAUL IN THE WORLD’S RELIGIOUS HISTORY 257 


attenuated to a Christ idea, would have created neither 
a religion of the people nor a religion of the peoples, 
but would have remained a rapidly worn out thesis for 
discussion among a narrow circle of Christologists. The 
mere historical Jesus would certainly have had greater 
carrying power as the foundation of the new church, 
but would have made Christianity retrospective, bound 
by the Law like Judaism, rigid like Islam. The Pauline 
Christ-intimacy with its decisive confession to the Christ 
present and coming, who is the crucified Jesus, made 
both past and future present. It was capable of creat- 
ing a cult fellowship both popular and of world-wide 
historic effect, which, filled with ethical power, was no 
book religion looking backward to the Law, but a 
Spiritual religion with face set forward. 


In all this Paul united Christian piety inseparably || 


with the Person of Jesus Christ, and that is his achieve- 
ment in the world’s history. 

Jesus of Nazareth stood, with His experience of 
God and with His mighty confidence in the nearness of 
the Kingdom of God, entirely self-supported. Paul 
placed himself and mankind, with all their hopes and 
troubles, where grace alone had placed him, in Christ. 
Where Jesus in lonely consciousness of His mission 
stands face to face with the Father, Paul stands before 
God, and with him stand the others, ‘through Christ’, 
and ‘in Christ.’ — 


Was Paul tampering with the old Gospel of Jesus 
concerning God and the nearness of His Kingdom when 
he thus incorporated with it religious faith in Christ # 

No! He secured to the many thé experience of 
God which had been the possession of the One. 

For the mass of the weary and heavy-laden it is 
impossible to emulate the heroic independence of the 


religious experience of Jesus. They need the Paraclete 
17 


958 PAUL 


(Comforter) and the Mediator. Laboriously they climb 
the heavenly ladder rung by rung hand in hand with 
their Helper: but over each one of their uncertain steps 
there is greater joy in heaven than over the titanic 
knowledge which still thinks itself able to take the 
firmament by storm, when already its downward plunge 
has ended in tragic ruin. 

The Christ-centred Christianity of Paul is the neces- 
sary form in which alone the Master’s revelation could 
be assimilated by mankind, and which alone was capable 
of fashioning a perennial religion for the people and a 
religion of the peoples powerful enough to mould the 
history of the world. Paul did not invent a Christology 


Yi intellectually adapted to the wisdom of the intellectual. 


What he did was out of the depths of his own mystical 
spiritual experience of Christ to bring to the poor and 
lowly and to those who felt themselves inwardly poor 
and lowly, the holy figure of the Divine-Human 
Redeemer—that figure which was folly to earth’s 
wisdom—in order that in fellowship with Him even the 
poorest and most helpless soul might be granted access 
to the living God. 

The Christ-centred Christianity of Paul is therefore 
neither a breach with the Gospel of Jesus nor a 
sophistication of the Gospel of Jesus. It secures for 
the many the Gospel experience of God which had been 
the possession of the One, and it does so by anchoring 
these many souls in the Soul of the One. 


APPENDICES 


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asta 


Ln wo 


——— 


Sh”, 





APPENDIX I 


THE PROCONSULATE OF L. JUNIUS GALLIO 


AN EPIGRAPHICAL STUDY TOWARDS THE ABSOLUTE CHRONOLOGY OF 
PAUL. (See the Photographed Facsimile facing the title page.) 


In my book Light from the Ancient Hast, written in 
1909, I used the following sentence :* 


No tablets have yet been found to enable us to date exactly 
the years of office of the Procurators Felix and Festus, or of the 
Pro-consul Gallio, which would settle an important problem of 
early Christian history. 


The problem of primitive Christianity, which I hoped 
might be solved by tablets still resting beneath the 
accumulated rubbish of centuries, is the chronology oi 
the Apostolic age and especially of the Apostle Paul. 
We were not in a position to name one tolerably certain 
date that would place the relative chronology of Paul, 
which is in the main determinable, on a firm basis and 
thus bring us nearer to the absolute chronology.” There 
always remained a margin of uncertainty amounting to 
at least five years. 

From the historians of the Imperial period, unless 
surprising fresh discoveries of lost texts should be made, 
there is scarcely anything to be expected. Even such 


1 Tight from the Ancient Hast, p. 5. 

2This fact is to be explained from the general character of the 
primitive Christian tradition concerning Paul, which has often been 
emphasised in the foregoing pages of this book. Being a popular 
tradition it had no interest in fixing facts chronologically. It is not 
calculated for the interests of scholars. As a whole it is the more 
historically trustworthy because so artless. 


(261) 


262 PAUL 


ingenious combinations of data as Eduard Schwartz * 
published concerning the years of office of Felix and 
Festus are not so convincing as to meet with general 
acceptance. Any real advance is rather to be expected 
from unliterary texts. Should it prove possible, for 
instance, to fix the date of the proconsulship of Gallio 
in Achaia, which is mentioned in Acts xvii. 12, we 
should have gained a starting-point of special importance, 
because clear statements of the narrator make it possible 
to make further calculations backwards and forwards 
from this point. 


Let us glance rapidly at the facts narrated in Acts 
xviii. Paul comes to Corinth from Athens.’ He finds 
there Aquila, the Jewish tent-maker, husband of Pris- 
cilla, who had ‘lately’* come to Corinth from Athens, 
having been banished with the other Jews from Rome * 
in consequence of an edict of Claudius. Paul is given 
lodging and employment in the house of his fellow- 
craftsmen.’ Every Sabbath he goes out evangelising, 
first in the Jewish synagogue before Jews and Greeks," 
then after strong opposition from the Jews,’ in the 
house of the proselyte Titius Justus, hard by the syna- 
gogue,® with the highly successful result that Crispus, 
the ruler of the synagogue, with his family and many 
Corinthians, came over to the faith and accepted baptism.” 


1Zur Chronologie des Paulus, Nachrichten von der Kgl. Gesell- 
schaft der Wissenschaften zu Gdttingen, philol.-histor. Klasse, 1907, 
p. 264 ff I mistrust Schwartz’s paper partly on exegetical grounds. 
Compare now the thorough criticism of his expositions by Eduard 
Meyer, Ursprung und Anfange des Christentwms, iii., Stuttgart and 
Berlin, 1923, p. 42 ff. 

2 Acts xviii. 1. 3 rpoopdrus, Acts xviii. 2. 

4 Acts xviil. 2. 5 Acts xviii. 3. 6 Acts xviii. 4 f. 

7 Acts xviii. 6. It is probably this opposition that Paul himself 
alludes to in letters written at Corinth, 1 Thess. ii. 15 f. and 2 Thess. 
iil, 2. 

§ Acts xviii. 7. ® Acts xvill. 8 ff. 


THE PROCONSULATE OF L. JUNIUS GALLIO 268 


This whole period of missionary work lasted a year and 
a half :? 


And he dwelt there a year and six months, teaching the word. 
of God among them. 


After this clear statement of time the narrator con- 
—tinues :” 
But when Gallio was proconsul of Achaia, the Jews with one 


accord rose up against Paul, and brought him before the judgment- 
seat, saying: ‘ This man seduces people to an unlawful religion.’ 


The proconsul, however, refuses to be drawn into a trial ; 
he declares that the dispute is an internal quarrel within 
the Jewish community and orders the Jews away from 
the tribunal.’ Enraged by their failure the disappointed 
Jews fall upon the ruler of their own synagogue, 
Sosthenes, and maltreat him before the tribunal of the 
proconsul, who does not interfere.” But Paul remains 
in Corinth for a considerable number of days® after 
this episode, and then sails for Syria by way of 
Ephesus.° 

Anyone reading this account for the first time, and 
knowing that the governors of the senatorial provinces, 
the proconsuls, normally held office for a period of 
one year,” would arrange the succession of events as 
follows :— 


1. Edict of Claudius against the Jews: emigration 
of Aquila and Priscilla from Rome to Corinth. 

2. Very soon afterwards *® Paul's arrival in Corinth. 

8. One and a half year’s missionary work in Corinth. 


1 Acts xviii. 11. 

2 Acts xviii. 12 £., TadAdwvos S& dvOurdtov dvtos THs "Axatas Karem- 
éxtncav dpmobvpaddy of ‘lovdator To HavAw. Gallio was, as is well 
known, the brother of Seneca, the philosopher. 

3 Acts xviii. 14 ff 4 Acts xviii. 17. 

5 Huepas ikavas. 6 Acts xviii. 18 f. 

7 Cf. below, p. 278. 8 Cf. rpocdarus, Acts xviii. 2. 


264 PAUL 


4. Arrival of the proconsul, Gallio, in Corinth. 

5. The Jews accuse Paul before Gallio without 
SUCCESS. 

6. Paul continues his stay in Corinth for a consider- 
able number of days. 

7. Departure of Paul for Ephesus and Syria. 


The salient point of this series is the fourth. The 
phrase, ‘but when Gallio was proconsul of Achaia,’ can 
only mean, that, as Luke understood, after Paul had 
evangelised for a year and a half at Corinth, a new 
proconsul arrived, Gallio, with whom the Jews then 
tried their luck.1. The passage has been thus, and rightly 
I think, explained by H. Lehmann’ and Oskar Holtz- 
mann,’ not to mention other authorities. 

If Gallio entered upon his proconsulship in the month 
y of the year 2, the arrival of Paul at Corinth is to 
be dated approximately eighteen months earlier ;* still 
earlier (but not much) would be the arrival of Aquila 
and Priscilla in Corinth, and the edict of Claudius 
against the Jews. In the same way we should be able 
with some certainty to reconstruct the later chronology 
of Paul’s life, starting from this year 2. 


1 The case is exactly the same as in Acts xxiv. 27—xxy. 2, where 
Luke tells us that after two years a new procurator came and the 
Jews then renewed proceedings against Paul. 

2 Qlaudius und Nero und thre Zeit. : Vol. 1., Claudius und serne 
Zeit, Gotha, 1858, p. 354: when Gallio ‘arrived at Corinth the Jews 
immediately brought an accusation against Paul who had been working 
for eighteen months in the city.’ 

3 Neutestamentliche Zeitgeschichte, 2nd Hd. Tubingen, 1906, 
p. 132, ‘Paul’s first residence in Corinth lasted a year and a half 
(Acts xviii. 11). Towards the end if not after the expiry of this time 
(Acts xviii. 12 f., 18), Gallio became proconsul of Achaia.’ 

4In making the calculation, of course, we must be generous 
enough not to insist on the ‘eighteen months’ down to the last 
minute; but we may employ that number as a clear approximate 
determination. 


—S 


THE PROCONSULATE OF L. JUNIUS GALLIO 265 


Now what about this year w? With the aid of a 
stone found at Delphi we can now calculate it with 
greater probability than has been possible hitherto. 

For my first knowledge of this stone I am indebted 
to P. Thomsen, who in a bibliography of the year 1909 re- 
ferred to Joseph Offord’s account’ of the four fragments 
of a Delphic inscription published by Emile Bourguet.’ 
I may as well add at once the other references to the 
inscription which are known tome. Alexander Nikitsky * 
was, I believe, the first to publish a drawing of a frag- 
ment of the stone, but, so far as I can see, without 
detailed discussion and without gaining any further at- 
tention to the fragment. H. Pomtow, however, had 
already among his papers, which he kindly allowed me 
to see in December, 1910, for the purposes of the pres- 
ent work, a copy of the main portion of the inscription, 
with which he had been acquainted for more than twenty 
years. In the autumn of 1910 he obtained for me, 
through the kind offices of his collaborator in epigraphy, 
Dr. Riisch, an accurate photograph of the published 
fragments, together with a paper squeeze.’ Before this 


1 Mitteilungen und Nachrichten des Deutschen Paldstina-Vereins, 
1909, p. 31. 

2 St. Paul at Corinth, Palestine Exploration Fund, Quarterly 
Statement, April, 1908, p. 168 (cf. also January, 1908, p. 9). 

3 De rebus Delphicis imperatorie etatis capita duo [Paris Thesis], 
Montepessulano, 1905, p. 63 f. Bourguet does not go into Pauline 
chronology; he contented himself with stating Gallio’s year of office 
as A.D. 52, on the authority of the Prosopographia (cf. below, p. 281, 
note 2). 

4In his Russian work brought to my notice by H. Pomtow on 
Epigraphical Studies at Delphi, 1.-VI., Odessa, 1894-1895, Plate 
VII., No. xlvii. It is the large fragment which stands second in our 
facsimile. 

‘From which the photographed facsimile (reproduced in Plate L,, 
facing the title-page of the present volume), was made by Albert 
Frisch in the Art Institute, Berlin, W. 35. In order to secure a 
sharper reproduction of what has been preserved, the under surface 
of the squeeze was photographed. 


266 PAUL 


A. J.-Reinach, in his review of Bourguet’s work, had 
pointed out the importance of this inscription in deter- 
mining Paul’s chronology, and so far as I can see he 
was the first to do so:! ‘ce texte fixe définitivement 
, 52 le séjour de saint Paul a Corinthe.’ 

Offord, then, in the article already mentioned * placed 
the entry of Gallio on his proconsulship in the year 52, 
the arrival of Paul in Corinth in the autumn of the year 
50, his departure from Corinth in the beginning of the 
year 53. 

Sir W. M. Ramsay ® calculated on the basis of this 
stone that Gallio’s proconsulship ran from April, 52, to 
April, 53, and that Paul arrived in Corinth in October, 
Die 

H. Coppieters* made no calculation of numbers, but 
only remarked that the inscription made it possible to 
fix the date of the proconsulship, while Louis Jalabert ° 
described Bourguet’s statement (Gallio’s year of office, 
52) as important for the determination of Pauline chron- 
ology. 

Carl Clemen,° who also adopted Bourguet’s date A.D. 
52 for Gallio’s proconsulship,’ believed that this date 
confirmed his own earlier calculation.* 

After having for some time been occupied with the 
Delphic inscription, in a short notice * of J alabert’s ‘ Epi- 


1 Revue des Etudes grecques, 20 (1907), p. 49. Iam indebted to 
Louis Jalabert for the reference. 

2 Toc. ctt., p. 164. 

’The Expositor, May, 1909, p. 468 f. 

4 Dictionnaire apologétique de la Foi catholique, Tome I. (Paris, 
1910), col. 268. 

5 Tbid., col. 1428 (article ‘ pigraphie’). 

6 Theologische Literaturzeitung, 35 (1910), col. 656. 

7* |. that Gallio was proconsul of Achaia in the year 52.’ 

8 Paulus, i., p. 896,‘ ... that Gallio arrived at Corinth in the 
spring of 52.’ 

? Theologische Literaturzeitung, 35 (1910), col. 796. 





| 
; 
7 


THE PROCONSULATE OF L. JUNIUS GALLIO 267 


graphie’ I announced my intention of publishing a closer 
investigation of the text.’ 

A few months later there appeared an article written 
jointly by E. C. Babut and Alfred Loisy* who had no 
knowledge of the earlier discussion of the question." 
Babut calculated that the proconsulship of Gallio lasted 
from the first third of 52 till the first third of 53,* and 
in accordance with this Loisy, whose hypertrophied 
critical mistrust of the above analysed report in the 
Acts of the Apostles makes him very suspicious, was of 
opinion that the accusation of Paul before Gallio, if his- 
torical, must be placed in the year 52 or the beginning 
of the year 53.° 

Finally, William P. Armstrong,’ who refers to part 
at least of the preceding discussion, including Jalabert’s 
note and my own, reprinted Bourguet’s text, and calcu- 
lated Gallio’s time from spring or early summer of 51 
to 52, or (and this he thought more probable), from 52 
to 53. 


The important fact of this whole discussion, apart 
from Bourguet’s original publication, was the statement 
of Babut’ that since the publication of the four frag- 
ments, three new fragments of the Delphic inscription 
had been discovered. Just as I was about to have my 
own manuscript printed, I received from Babut a photo- 
graph of these fragments* which he had very kindly sent 


1] finished the main part of my investigation in March, 1911, and 
on May 2, 1911, spoke of it in the Archeological Society at Berlin. 

2Le proconsul Gallion et saint Paul, Revue d’histoire et de lit- 
térature religieuses, 2 (1911), March-April, 1911, p. 139-144. 

8 Of. their expression of astonishment that no student of Paul had 
noticed the document though it had been published five years (p. 139). 

4 Loe. cit., p. 142. 5 Thid., p. 144. 

6The Princeton Theological Review, April, 1911, p. 293-298. 

7 Loc, cit., p. 139. 

8 With a letter dated Montpellier, April 23, 1911. 


268 PAUL 


at my request, and shortly afterwards Bourguet sent me 
with the same scholarly courtesy, also at my request, the 
squeeze of two of those fragments and a copy of all 
three.’ 

On the 30th of April, 1911, Pomtow had very kindly 
given me a squeeze which he had made in 1887 of the 
middle fragment of the three.* This had already been 
published by Nikitsky.* Even in 1887 Pomtow, as 1s 
clear from his MS. papers, had been led by the simi- 
larity of the lettering to compare his fragment with those 
which Bourguet afterwards published, as far as they 
were accessible. He decided, however, on account of 
the differences of spaces between the lines, that it could 
not be united with them. Even to-day Pomtow is of 
opinion * that the ‘new’ fragments, while certainly carved | 
by the same stonemason as the old ones, did not form 
part of the text of the same rescript, but were probably 
the conclusion of another rescript. In further proof of 
this he refers to differences in the height of the letters 
in the two groups of fragments. 

In Berlin I am not able to decide whether the ‘new ’ 
fragments really belong to the old. To do so I should 
be obliged in the first place to examine the tablets 
myself at Delphi. Pomtow’s argument, based on the 
spacing and size of the letters, does not entirely convince 
me, because the old fragments are in neither respect 
quite uniform in their workmanship. Here, however, I 
may be content to let the question remain open. For 

1 With a letter dated Athens, May 8,1911. There were the two 
Delphic fragments, Nos. 728 and 500. Bourguet also most kindly 
added a new squeeze of the greater part of the old fragments already 
published by him. 

2This is the fragment No. 2311. I have seen squeezes of all 
three of the ‘new’ fragments. 

3Plate VII., No. xlvi. 


‘Therefore he published the rescript of Claudius in the third 
edition of Dittenberger’s Sylloge (see below), without these fragments. 


THE PROCONSULATE OF L. JUNIUS GALLIO 269 


however important the ‘new’ fragments may be for 
reconstructing the rescript of Claudius, if they are 
really a part of it, they seem to me to throw no new 
light so far on our particular chronological problem. 

I have respected the wish expressed to me in 1911 
by Bourguet that I would use with discretion the 
unpublished fragments which he sent me. Therefore I 
did not publish them and refrained from making 
facsimiles. However, Bourguet told me after he had 
received my Paul' that if he could have known how 
much importance I attached to the rescript of Claudius, 
he would have begged me to share with him in publish- 
ing the ‘new’ fragments. Thereupon I was able to 
lend the material to my friend Dr. Plooij (Leiden), who 
has given in the plate facing the title-page of his 
Chronology” a good facsimile of all the seven frag- 
ments. Brassac* has also previously submitted a 
facsimile. Itis not necessary, therefore, for me to have 
fresh facsimiles made of the new fragments, but I can 
at least give a transcription of their text. Parts of it 
are easily filled out, but it does not appear to me 
possible to restore the whole at present :— 


1, TIES 

oh.) ce aaeatat oe IMENTAPE ... 

de» HIS laa ee eee TOHOY > KP ea: 
SOPRA eels NITANTOSE... 

Spy Ut AA rR Rea @HOITINE.. 

Caepee Ner ert. is IKAITOSYNA .. 

(et ae ene wee OTD ee aes 
Sieh s5, 9, ME OUSMENGW a ees 


The literature dealing with this rescript of Claudius 
which has appeared since the first edition of my Paul 


1 Letter dated Delphi, August 26th, 1911. 
2 See below, p. 270, note 1. 3 Ibid. 


270 PAUL 


is very considerable. So far as it is known to me I 
refer to it in the note below.! No doubt it is fragment- 


1 Hans Lietzmann, Hin newer Fund zur Chronologie des Paulus, 
Zeitschrift fiir wissenschaftliche Theologie, 53 (1911), pp. 345-354; 
Réné Dussaud, Revue de histoire des religions, 64 (1911), p. 268; H. 
Dubowy, Paulus und Gallio, Bibl. Zeitschrift, 10 (1912), pp. 143-1658 ; 
Schafer, Zur Chronologie des Lebens Pauli, Der Katholik, 92 (1912), 
pp. 149-153 ; Bares, Hin interessanter Fund von Delphi, Pastor Bonus, 
24 (1912), pp. 219-223 ; M. Goguel, Revue de l’histoire des religions, 65 
(1912), p. 315; G. Wohlenberg, Hine Claudius-Inschrift von Delpha mn 
ihrer Bedeutung fiir die paulinische Chronologie, Neue Kirchl. Zeitschrift, 
93 (1912), pp. 380-396; Adolf Harnack, Chronologische Berechnung 
des ‘ Tags von Damaskus,’ Sitzungsberichte der Kgl. Preusz. Ak. d. W., 
1912, phil.-hist. Klasse, pp. 673-682; Ferd. Prat, La chronologie de Vdge 
apostolique, Recherches des sciences religiewses (Paris), 1912, p. 374 ff ; 
Lorenzo Coccolo, L’anno del proconsolato di Gallione e data della prima 
missione di S. Paolo a Corinto, in the Journal Didascaleion, 1 (1912), pp. 
985-294, and La cronologia paolina, Didascaleion, 2 (1913), pp. 261-306 ; 
J. Offord, Archeological notes, Palestine Exploration Fund, Quarterly 
Statement, 1913, pp. 146-149 ; van der Kar, Hen delphisch opschrift en de 
chronologie van St. Paulus, Ned. Kath. Stemmen, 1913, pp. 282-287 ; C. 
Bruston, La date du proconsulat de Gallion, Revue de théologie et de 
questions religieuses, 22 (1913), pp. 362-366 ; A. Brassac, Une inscription 
de Delphes et la chronologie de Saint Paul, Revue Biblique, 10 (1913), 
pp. 86-53 and 207-217; H. Pomtow in Guil. Dittenberger, Sylloge 
Inscriptionum Gracarum®, 2, Lipsiae, 1917, No. 801, pp. 492-494; D. 
Plooij, De chronologie van het leven van Paulus, Leiden, 1918; in 
addition Hans Windisch in Theologisch Tijdschrift, 53 (1919), p. 167 
ff: B. W. Bacon, The Chronological Scheme of Acts, The Harvard 
Theological Review, 14 (1921), pp. 137-166; Adolf Jilicher, Review 
of Plooij in Gétt. gel. Anzeigen, 184 (1922), pp. 200-209 ; cf. also Theol. 
Lit.-Zeitg., 49 (1924), col. 340 f.; [Wilhelm] Larfeld, Die delphische 
Gallioinschrift und die paulinische Chronologie, Neue kirchl. Zeitschrift, 
34 (1923), pp. 638-647; Eduard Meyer, Ursprung und Anfange des 
Christentums, iii. (1923), p. 87 f. Luigi Cantarelli, Gallione proconsole 
di Acaia e San Paolo, Rendiconti of the Reale Accademia Nazionale dei 
Lincei, Vol. 32 (1923), pp. 157-175 ; Otto Stiahlin, Die altchristl. griech. 
Initeratur (Christ ®), Miinchen, 1924, p. 11384. In addition the com- 
mentaries on Acts and Handbooks and Introductions to the New 
Testament, which have appeared since then. Cantarelli cites further 
the following works : Pirot, Actes des apétres, pp. 172 and 174; Christ, 
Geschichte der Griech Litteratur, II.5, 2, p. 931 ff.; Omodeo, Origins 
cristiane, ii., pp. 18 ff, 110, 372 ff; i., p. 264. 


THE PROCONSULATE OF L. JUNIUS GALLIO 271 


ary, as the years we have passed through have made 
any complete knowledge of international literature 
— impossible. 


I proceed first to the description and text of the 
four old fragments. For details of the description I 
am indebted to Pomtow’s MS. papers. 
| The material is whitish-gray limestone from the 
- Hagios Elias quarries near Delphi. The four fragments 
now preserved in the Museum at Delphi are numbered 
in the collection ! 3883, 2178, 2271,” 4001. 

Our facsimile*® gives these four fragments in what is 
supposed to be their original positions,* on a reduced 
scale of about 1:32. The height of the letters amounts 
to 18-20 millimetres (i.e. about three-quarters of an 
inch). Pomtow is confident that the inscription was 
originally set up on an outer wall of the south side of 
the temple of Apollo at Delphi.’ 

The text seems to be horribly mutilated and it really 
is so. But nevertheless, as regards those portions 
which concern our problem, we may say that chance 
has for once behaved reasonably and _ benevolently. 
Just those passages which are of most importance to us 
are clearly legible and quite usable. 

The length of the lines is, I think, certainly under- 
estimated by Bourguet, who by restoration brought the 
first line up to a total of 54 letters. The title of 


1 These numbers are here given in order according to the sequence 
of the text. 

2 Bourguet, p. 63, gives this as number 59, the number it formerly 
was known by. 

3 Above, Plate I., facing title-page. 

4 There is no doubt according to the judgment of the archeologists, 
who have investigated the originals (Pomtow, Bourguet and Riisch) 
that the four fragments really all belong to one another. 

‘ Bourguet, pp. 59, 67, 69, has already fixed upon the south wall of 
the temple as the position of the imperial inscription. 


272 PAUL 


pontifer maximus forms part of the full style of 
Claudius,! I have therefore inserted dpytepevs péyvotos, 
thus making a line of 71 letters. The original line 
of the inscription must have been about 1:40 metre 
long (i.e. 55 inches). In the first line the letters seem 
to be somewhat farther apart than in the following 
lines. 

The text with probable restorations is given op- 
posite.’ 

In ordinary script and with a few additional re- 
storations which I have essayed merely for the sake 
of illustration,’ and for which I must refer to the 
commentary, I would now give the text as follows :— 


1. TiBép[ios KAavdvos K]atolap S<Baor]os T[eppavixds, dpxrepeds pé- 
yuotos, Onpapxixns efov-| 

9. alas [rd 8, abroxpdérwp t]d xs’, alatnp tlatpi[dos, traros 76 €, 
Tintys, AeAboyv THe wore Xatpew]. 

3. Tldd[ae pev] the w[dAe tlov AcAd[Gv wrpdllupols eyevounv.... . 
MAPS ALES, Bork ct Kal evvous e& ap-| 


4. yijs, det [8°] erypy[oa tHlv Opyckellay t]od Amd[AXwvos Tod TvGiov 


ese is a Uae Chay Gas eae doa Oe] 

5. viv A€yerau kal [roA]erOv epi[des élketvar W. 2... ee ee ees 
HPO Ry ven Ri [xafws Aovkuos Iov-| 

6. vos Taddwv 6 d[idos] pou Kalt dvOv|raros [rns Ayatas eypapev 
Maasai) dua TOUTO avyxupS buas] 

7. éru eEew tov mpo[reploly ..... © |e [vel . re he 


ROO Ra in he els) Tov GA-] 


1 Groag in Pauly-Wissowa, Real-Encyclopddie der klassischen Alter- 
tumswissenschaft, 3 (Stuttgart, 1899), col. 2787. For pontifex maxumus 
we sometimes find simply dpyvepeds (David Magie, De Romanorum 
juris publict sacrique vocabulis solemnibus in Grecum sermonem con- 
versis, Lipsiae, 1905, p. 64). I have preferred the longer formula, 
because it seems to preponderate in other inscriptions of Claudius 
which are known to me. But of course the shorter translation, 
dpy.epe’s alone, is also possible. 

2The imperfect letters are indicated by dots beneath them ; 
probable restorations of lacune are printed in small type. 

’ Partly after Pomtow and Hiller von Gaertringen in Ditten- 
berger’s Sylloge.? 


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‘NOILGIMOSNY OITIVD AHL dO XH], AHL dO NOLLVUOLSEY ATavaoug 


TOLL 2 

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POCO Se aoigar aor SoamyyOIV LO? a] [MRHAON " POHAHLIVAVEHX 

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THE PROCONSULATE OF L. JUNIUS GALLIO 2738 


8. Awv woA\cwv Ka — — — (about 60 letters) 
9. avrots éritpe[tw — — (about 58 letters) 
10. dav as tole — — — (about 62 letters) 
11. rau petoxi[ca — — — (about 62 letters) 
12, [ro|vrov — — — — — (about 65 letters) 


Cee ee 


In commenting on this text we may start from the 
undoubted fact, that we have here before us one of 
the imperial letters such as have been preserved by 
ancient authors and especially by inscriptions.’ It is 
no less evident that it is a letter from the Emperor 
Claudius to the city of Delphi, although the name of 
the addressee in the preescript has been lost. We may 
assume from the first—and this is of importance in 
attempting the restoration of the mutilated text—that 
the contents of this letter must have been something 
favourable to Delphi.2 The Emperor Claudius perhaps 
guaranteed anew some ancient privileges of the sacred 
city, just as he confirmed to the Jews of Alexandria 
their old privileges in a letter written at the beginning 
of his reign,* and in a letter to the authorities of 
Jerusalem written in the year 45 graciously settled a 
question that strongly excited the religious sensibilities 
of the Jews.* Other inscriptions, some of them newly 


1Of. Licht vom Osten, 4th Ed., p. 321 f. 

2 Otherwise the document would hardly have been recorded in 
stone and set up in the temple of Apollo. 

3 This letter of Claudius has been preserved by Josephus, Ant. xix. 
6, 2 On the other hand, it must not be overlooked that Claudius 
even early in his reign sharply reproved the Jews of Alexandria, cf. 
the newly discovered letter of the year 41 published by Bell, p. 1 ff. 
(see above p. 230). 

4 This letter of Claudius has also been handed down by Josephus, 
Antt. xx. 1,2. Further on the letters of Claudius handed down by 
Josephus, cf. T. Kindlmann, Utrum littere, que ad Claudiwm Tiberium 
imperatorem apud Josephum referuntur, ad eum referend@ sint nec ne, 
queritur, Cremsirii, 1884. 


18 


274. PAUL 


published by Bourguet,* prove that the relations of this 
very Emperor Claudius to the city of Delphi were of 
long standing and friendly. Excellent analogies are 
also furnished by numerous letters from other emperors 
to the city of Delphi. Recorded, like the letter of 
Claudius, in the form of an inscription, a good proportion 
of them have come down to us in considerable trag- 
ments.” 

We come now to details. Line 1 has already been 
discussed as regards the probable number of letters it 
contained. The restoration of the name Claudius is 
certain. 

Line 2 is the most important as bearing on our 
problem because it contains the decisive date. The 
12 denoting the number of times Claudius had been 
invested with the tribunician power (Snmapxexy é€oveta) 
is only restored, but the 26 (xs) denoting the number 
of times he had been acclaimed imperator (adroxparwp) 
which is of far greater importance to us, is above all 
doubt. At my request Hermann Dessau most oblig- 
ingly put together for me in January, 1911, the materials 
available for calculating the 26th acclamation of Clau- 
dius as imperator. These materials had already mostly 
been given by Groag * :— 

‘Altogether Claudius was acclaimed imperator 27 
times. As imperator XXVII. he appears for the first 
time on a monument of the 12th year of his tribunician 


1De rebus Delphicis, p. 62 £.; cf. Dittenberger, Sylioge, 3rd Hd., 
No. 801, A-C, and Plooij, p. 32. 

2 Cf. Bourguet, p. 59-93. 

3 Cf. Groag, op. cit., col. 2812 f.; cf. also Ermanno Ferrero in 
De Ruggiero Dizionario epigrafico, ii, p. 297, 300. I give the 
materials in extenso because hitherto in discussion mistaken state- 
ments have repeatedly been made; in particular the expositions of 
Cagnat, Cours d’épigraphie latine, Supplément a la trowieme édition, 
Paris, 1904, p. 478, have been in part misunderstood by some 
investigators. 


THE PROCONSULATE OF L. JUNIUS GALLIO 275 


power (which ran from January 25th, a.p. 52, till the 
same date in 53) viz.,a monumental arch of the Aqua 
Claudia at Rome inscribed :—* 

Ti. Claudius Drusi f. Caisar Augustus Germanicus pontif. 
maxim., tribunicia potestate XII., cos. V., imperator XXVIL., 
pater patrize. 

‘As the aquaduct was dedicated,’ on August Ist, 52, 
the inscription would give the style of Claudius as it 
was on August Ist, 52. 

‘Claudius appears as imperator XX VJ. in several 
inscriptions besides the one from Delphi. To begin 
with there is C.I.L. VIIL., Suppl. No. 14727 (Africa) and 
XIII, No. 254 (Aquitania).? The year of his tribunician 
power, wanting in both these instances, is given in an 
inscription from the Carian city of Cys * :— 

TiBépiov KAavdiov Kaicapa Veppavxoy atroxpdtopa Geov <eBacrov 
dpyvepea, peyrotov, OnpapxiKns eSovatas 76 bwdéxarov, Urarov TO TEevTTOY, 
avToKpaTopa TO €(KOOTOV Kal EKTOV, TATepa Tatpioos. 

‘This inscription certainly belongs to the period 
between the beginning of the 12th tribunician power 
and the first appearance of the 27th imperatorial accla- 
mation, i.e. between January 25th and August Ist., 52. 

‘It is highly probable that the imperial letter 
contained in the Delphi inscription is also to be placed 
in this period, although it is not altogether impossible 
that Claudius received his 26th imperatorial acclama- 
tion during his 11th tribunician power.’ He certainly 


1 Corpus Inscriptionwm Latinarum, vi., No. 1256 = Dessau, Inserip- 
tiones selecte, No. 218. Only the beginning of the inscription is quoted 
above. 

2Frontinus, De aquis, i. 13. 

’ For this passage, which is not mentioned in Dessau’s materials, 
I am indebted to Lehmann (Clawdiws, Bk. IV., p. 43), who quoted 
it from Muratori. 

4 Bulletin de Correspondance Hellénique, 11 (1887), p. 306 f. 

5 We should then have to read 7d va’ instead of 70 18" in line 2 of 
the Gallio inscription. 


276 PAUL: 


received his 22nd and 24th imperatorial acclamations 
during his 11th tribunician year,’ and, of course, also 
his 28rd, though that has not yet been found recorded. 
The 25th has also not yet been found but it might fall 
likewise in the 1ith tribunician year, ie. before 
January 25th, 52. If the 26th also occurred in the 
11th year it could only be towards the end of that 
year, ie. at the end of 51 or in January, 52. But 
this assumption cannot be regarded as at all pro- 
bable.’ 

The small margin of uncertainty in dating the 26th 
imperatorial acclamation does not matter as far as our 
question is concerned. Claudius addressed his letter to 
Delphi at some time between (the end of 51, or more 
probably) the beginning of 52 and August., 52. 

In line 2 I have supplied conjecturally the titles of 
consul (vzaros) and censor (rTysyr7s). The formula 
Ackdav TH TOdEL Yaipew agrees in the order of its words 
with the usage of the preescripts in other imperial 
letters.’ 

Bourguet in 1905 took line 3 as part of the pre- 
script,’ restoring it thus: aaA[uw ? 7 |He w| odev 7 |Ov Aehd| ov 
tpo0|updltara yatpev|. As regards both form and 
contents this restoration seems to me to be open to 
grave objection ; tpodupdzata yatpew would, I think, be 
quite unusual. Bourguet, however, as he informed me 
in the letter mentioned above,* has since discovered 
another restoration: ... 77 madlavoral|rne ml oder T lov 
Aehd[ ov, which Baron Hiller von Gaertringen ® had also 
conjectured independently. Attractive as this restora- 
tion is, it seems unusual to me if it is to form part of 


1 References are given in Groag, col. 2812. 

2 Cf. now also the letter of Claudius written in the year 41, see 
Bell, op. cit., p. 23, 15 f. "AAeEavdpéwv TH woAEL xarpev. 

5 De rebus Delphicis, p. 63. 4 Above, p. 269, note 1. 

° Letter dated, Westend, April 29th, 1911. 


THE PROCONSULATE OF L. JUNIUS GALLIO 277 


the preescript of the letter; cf. the remarks on line 2 
above. For my conjecture waka... , which would 
be the beginning of the Emperor’s reference to his old 
feelings of friendly interest in Delphi, cf., for instance, 
the beginning of the edict of Gn. Vergilius Capito * 
(A.D. 48), Kat mada prev QKovor. 

In line 4, judging from the squeeze taken by Riisch 

in 1911 I thought yyoa more probable than Bourguet’s 

..uca. The restoration [evrd|ynoa which I then 
suggested did not fit badly with what one would expect 
the thought to be. The Emperor would say with con- 
descending hyperbole that it had been his happiness 
hitherto to give the city of Delphi signs of his favour. 
But I now prefer the restoration given above. An 
exact parallel to the sentence which then follows,’ ‘I 
have observed the worshipping of Apollo,’ * is furnished 
by a letter of Hadrian to Delphi:* kat es Hv 
ap[xaudTnTa TH|s Toews Kal Eis THY TOU KaTEXOVTOS alUTHY 
Beod Opna|keiav’ adopov. So, too, Claudius speaks of 
the wdrp.os Opnoxeia in his letter to the Jews of Alex- 
andria® and similarly in his letter to the authorities 
at Jerusalem.’ 

In lines 5 and 6 I have now adopted the restoration 
proposed by Hiller von Gaertringen, ép:[ des], although it 

1Tn the inscription given by Dittenberger, Orientis Graect Inscrip- 
tiones Selectae, No. 665, 15. 

2 Hiller von Gaertringen in 1911 attempted a quite different 
restoration: dx’ dplyjs de[r or y] érnpyloare rH]v, etc. But with 
Pomtow in Dittenberger’s Sylloge, 3rd Hd., he decided for érjpy[ca ; 
rightly. I have prefered this reconstruction on account of the parallel 
from the letter of Hadrian which is about to be mentioned ; in the main 
it is Bourguet’s. 

3Instead of rtlod “Amd[AAwvos] we might also conjecture Ge]od 
"Azo[AAwvos]. 

4 Bourguet, p. 78. 7 

’For the genitive after Opyoxeia, cf. also Col. ii. 18, Opnoxeia trav 
ayyérwv. 

6 Cf. above, p. 273, note 3. 7 Ibid., note 4. 


278 PAUL 


gives the letter a very peculiar tone, which is certainly 
a daring thing to do when making a restoration. The 
restored reading |’Iov|vios is certain, AovKuos iS pro- 
bable.’ 

In line 6 6 [tos] pov kali avOvl|mraros is also 
unexceptionable. ‘My dearest friends’? is the term 
applied to King Agrippa and King Herod by Claudius in 
his edict of toleration for the Jews.* The expression 
‘friend’ seems to have been in official use with special 
reference to provincial governors. ‘Trajan in a letter to 
the city of Delphi speaks of [a|pOurdar@ Kai dite pov 
“Epevr[t|o Latopveivw;* and in a letter from Marcus 
Aurelius to the Synodus of Smyrna the Proconsul 
T. Atilius Maximus is called 6 kpdtictos avOvmatos Kal 
dios nav.’ The whole form of expression tends to 
show that Gallio was the Proconsul in office at the 
time of the letter.° 

We may here at once discuss the question of the 
dating of his proconsulship.’ The governors of the 
senatorial provinces, the proconsules (avOv7aro.), Whom 
the Senate as a rule appointed by lot, held the office 
for a year.. It was an exception for a proconsul to 
remain longer in office. It is on record that the ex- 
ception of a proconsulship lasting for two years occurred 
in some cases under Claudius.’ But I consider it very 


1Cf. below, p. 285, the Gallio inscription from Plataea. 

2On the expression ‘friend of the Emperor,’ cf. Licht vom Osten, 
4th Hd., p. 324. 

’ Josephus, Anit. xix. 5, 3, rév diAtarev po. 4 Bourguet, p. 70. 

* Dittenberger, Sylloge, 2nd Hd., No. 406 (= 3rd Ed., No. 851). 

6 Numerous examples of the mention of the proconsul in office in 
imperial letters will be found in Léon Lafoscade, De epistulis (aliisque 
titulis) imperatorum magisiratuumque Romanorum... (a Paris 
thesis), Insulis, 1902, p. 127, under av6vzaros. 

7 Here, too, I am indebted for kind assistance to Dessau. 

§ Theodor Mommsen, Rdmisches Staatsrecht, i., 3rd Ed., p. 255. 

® Dio Cassius, lx. 25, 6, kairou cal ét dvo érn twas édv adrdy d.pxewv 


(A.D. 44-45). 


THE PROCONSULATE OF L. JUNIUS GALLIO 279 


probable that in this particular case of the proconsuls 
of Achaia the rule was observed. 

In the year 44 the province of Achaia, which had 
previously for some time been combined with Mace- 
donia and had been under a legatus Augusti pro pretore, 
was given back to the Senate by Claudius. Was he 
likely, in this special case of a province restored to the 
Senate, so soon afterwards to disregard the privilege 
of the Senate, which lay in the annual nomination of 
the governors of its provinces? Moreover, there is the 
fact that Gallio fell ill with fever in Achaia, and himself 
attributed the disease to the climate ;? it is therefore not 
exactly credible that he should have remained there any 
longer than necessary. In any case, however, it seems 
to me that in chronological calculations what we have 
to do is to take the normal condition of things as our 
basis, not the remotely possible exception.» We must 
assume that the proconsulship of Gallio lasted one year 
until it has been proved to have lasted longer. 

Now if Gallio, on the evidence of the Delphi in- 
scription, was in office in the period of the 26th 1m- 
peratorial acclamation of Claudius, it is possible to 
calculate with great probability the date of his entry 
upon his duties. Gallio’s entry upon office is the salient 
point of the problem. The mistaken notion occurs not 
infrequently that the date in the calendar year at which 
a proconsulship began was somewhere about April Ist." 


1Dio Cassius, lx., 24, 1, ri re ’Ayatav xal tiv Maxedoviay aiperots 
&pxovewv, @ odzep 6 TiBépios Hp&e, diopevas arédwxev 6 KAavdios téTe TO 
Khnpe. 

2 Seneca, Hp. Mor., 104, 1. ‘Illud mihi in ore erat domini mei 
Gallionis, qui cum in Achaia febrim habere coepisset, protinus navem 
adscendit clamitans non corporis esse sed loci morbum.’ 

3 This is rightly insisted on by Sir W. M. Ramsay, The Expositor, 
May, 1909, p. 469. 

4 For instance, Carl Clemen in his excellent Paulus, i., Giessen, 
1904, p. 396, says that the office had ‘to be entered on before the 


280 PAUL 


A more inconvenient date, however, could hardly 
be imagined, because it would compel the proconsuls, 
if their province were at a great distance from Rome, 
to travel at a most unfavourable time of the year. We 
possess, moreover, positive information. Tiberius in 
A.p. 15 had decreed that the officials should leave Rome 
‘within’ the new moon of the month of June;’ this 
would point to July 1st as the day of entry upon office, 
a date that would in many respects be a favourably 
chosen one. Obviously, however, the time was not 
exactly ample for reaching some provinces, and it must 
have been recognised that the date had not been happily 
chosen. Claudius, therefore—no doubt also because he 
was annoyed by the length of time that the new dig- 
nitaries hung about the Capital—gave orders in A.D. 42 
that they must start before the April new moon.? In 
the following year he reduced this very early date to the 
time before the middle of April.’ 

We may therefore say that the date of the entry 
upon office was about the middle of the calendar year— 
at any rate sometime in summer.* The account in the 


beginning of April by a law of Claudius,’ and refers to Dio Cassius, 
Ix., 18, 17. But there is no such passage; the reference probably 
comes from Gustav Hoennicke, Die Chronologie des Lebens des Apostels 
Paulus, Leipzig, 1903, p. 28, where, however, it is said more correctly 
that by a law of Claudius the new proconsuls had to leave Rome before 
the beginning of April. The intended reference is to Dio Cassius, 
xe aL a0: 

1Dio Cassius, lvii., 14, 5, éxéXeveé cdiow évros THs Tod ‘Iovviov vov- 
pnvias apoppacba. That is, of course, to be understood as the last 
possible date of departure. 

2 Tbid., Ix., 11, 6, xarédeée Se Kat rade, Tovs TE KANpwTods apxovTas 
Tpo THS TOD AmptAiov vovpnvias, érednep eri TOAD ev TO Gore evexpovicov, 
apoppacbat. 

3 Ibid., lx., 17, 3, mpds & eri tots dpyovar Trois KAynpwrots, Bpadéws 
rt Kal TOTE €K THS TOAEWS ESOPUMUEVOLS, TpoElTE Tply werovy Tov AmpidLov 
amaipe.v. 

*Mommsen, Staatsrecht, ii, 3rd Ed., p. 256, assumes July Ist 
as the normal date. 


THE PROCONSULATE OF L. JUNIUS GALLIO 281 


Acts of the Apostles seems to me to harmonise with 
this conjecture. If, as seems to me beyond doubt, 
Acts xviii. 12 speaks of the new proconsul, we obtain 
for Paul’s voyage to Syria (Acts xviii. 18 ff.) the very 
best time of year :— 


about July beginning of the new proconsulship, 

soon after unsuccessful accusation brought by the 
J OWS, 

further residence of Paul in Corinth, 

departure for Syria (say) in August or September 
of the same year.’ 


If, then, the letter of Claudius to Delphi was written 
between (the end of 51 or, more probably) the beginning 
of 52 and August Ist, 52, and Gallio was then’ in office, 
he entered on his proconsulship in the summer (nominally 


July 1st) of a.vd. 51° 
Line 6 f. The restoration of the remainder of line 


1 There is an interesting parallel in the date at which Festus, the 
imperial procurator, happened to enter his office. Harnack (Die 
Chronologie der altchristlichen Litteratur bis Husebiws, vol. i, 
Leipzig, 1897, p. 237) very rightly conjectures, from the statement 
in the Acts of the Apostles concerning Paul’s departure for Rome, that 
Festus entered on’ his duties in summer. Of course no decisive weight 
is to be attached to this parallel, because it is not concerned with a 
proconsulship lasting for one year. 

2In the Prosopographia Impertt Roman, i, Berolini, 1897, 
p. 288, Dessau gave 52 as the date of Gallio’s proconsulship, and 
Bourguet (p. 64), obviously regarded it as an established fact. In 
1897, however, it was only a conjecture, though a happy one. ‘The 
fact that the date now proves to be right is no justification for having 
assumed it then,’ Dessau wrote to me on January 20th, 1911. 

The purely logical possibility that he entered on his official 
duties on July 1st, 52, and that the letter of Claudius was written 
between July 1st and August Ist, 52, suggests itself for a moment, but 
only to be rejected as altogether improbable. August Ist, 52, is not 
the day on which Claudius received his 27th imperatorial acclamation, 
but only the terminus ad quem for this title. For a criticism of the 
above exposition, cf. Cantarelli, p. 14. 


282 PAUL 


6 is of course not certain; ovyywpe is however in any 
case the technical word for ‘to approve,’' especially 
when referring to the bestowal of imperial favours.’ 
The words eu efew rdov mpd rep |o[v] suggest, what was 
a priori probable, that some earlier privileges of Delphi 
were to be confirmed. 

Line 7 f. might of course be restored as [od ]\av 
TONEwD.” 

In line 9 I should conjecture with Pomtow [Ae\]¢éav 
ws. Bourguet’s [ovp|dadves is, however, just as well 
possible. 

In line 12 considerations of space make [7olvrou 
more probable than Bourguet’s [a ]irod. 

The conclusions as regards the chronology of Paul 
are easily drawn. If Gallio entered on his office in the 
middle of the summer of 51, and if the accusation of 
Paul by the Jews took place soon afterwards, then, 
since he had already been working for approximately 
eighteen months in Corinth, Paul must have come to 
Corinth m the first months of the year 50, and left 
Corinth in the late summer of the year 51. 


I refrain from comparing this calculation with the 
more or less divergent results obtained by others above- 
named who have made use of the Gallio inscription. I 
have given all the materials, and every one can make 
this examination for himself. Still less is there any 
need for me to show seriatim the incorrectness of 
earlier attempts to find a merely hypothetically possible 


‘Cf. the letter of Claudius to the Alexandrians in the year 41, 
Bell, op. cit., p. 23.32, and 24.46, also that to the authorities of 
Jerusalem in the year 45, Josephus, Anztt., xx. 1, 2. 

* Cf the letter of Claudius in Josephus, Antt., xix. 5, 3, for Delphi, 
Trajan’s letter in Bourguet, p. 70 (which I assume is rightly restored), 
and also Lafoscade, p. 110 f. 

* But cf. rai[s] dA[Aas] réAcow in a letter of Hadrian’s, Bourguet, - 
D. (a, 


THE PROCONSULATE OF L. JUNIUS GALLIO 283 


date, varying from aA.p. 48 to A.D. 54 for Gallio’s pro- 
consulship. I would rather note that as early as 1858 
H. Lehmann,’ whose knowledge of the sources for the 
time of Claudius was very exact, got at the truth (and 
at the same time stated the problem in the true way) 
when he placed Gallio’s entry on office in the summer 
of 51. 

I should like, however, at least to refer to the con- 
firmation which my calculation of the time of Paul’s 
stay at Corinth receives from a statement which has 
often been noted in Orosius. On the authority of 
‘Josephus,’ Orosius says that Claudius in the ninth year 
of his reign expelled the Jews from Rome.’ That 
would mean the year which ran from January 25th, 49, 
to the same date in 50. And since Paul on arriving at 
Corinth met Aquila the tentmaker there, who had 
‘lately ’’* arrived from Italy after his expulsion from 
Rome by the edict of Claudius, from this we could also 
conclude that, if the Apostle reached Corinth at the 
beginning of the year 50, the year 49 would be approxi- 
mately the date of the edict of Claudius against the 
Jews. 

Ramsay,* it is true, maintains that Orosius is always 
a year behind in his chronology of Claudius; but that 
does not dispose of the remarkable coincidence between 
our calculation and Orosius, for in this case Orosius is 


1 Claudius, p. 354. It ig true, he places the arrival of Paul at 
Corinth as early as the end of the year 49 (p. 332); but even this is 
not impossible. 

2 Orosius, vii., 6, 15, ‘Anno eiusdem nono expulsos per Claudium 
urbe Iudzos Iosephus refert.’ The same statement in Beda, De 
temporum ratione a. 4007, is certainly taken from Orosius. 

3 Acts xvili. 2, rpooddtws éAnAvOdra amd THs “Iradias . . . dua TO 
tetaxevat Kravdvov ywpilerGar mavras Tos ‘lovdaious aro tis Popys. 

4 St. Paul the Traveller and Roman Citizen, 11th Ed., pp. 254 and 
68; The Expositor, May, 1909, p. 468. He therefore places the 
expulsion of the Jews ‘according to Orosius’ in the year 50. 


284 PAUL 


giving not his own chronology but that of his authority, 
‘Josephus,’ and (this is very important to observe) with- 
out attaching much importance to Josephus.! In our 
texts of Flavius Josephus the statement, it must be 
admitted, is wanting. It is possible that Orosius means 
some other ‘ Josephus,’* or that he has made a mistake 
in the name of his authority; but the statement itself for 
which he does not profess any particular respect ‘cannot 
be his own invention’ ;? that I take to be obvious.‘ 


The inscription at Delphi does not exhaust the epi- 
graphical material referring to Gallio. There isa tablet 
from Pompeii’ inscribed with a receipt which bears on 
the question of his consulship, and has often® been 


‘In vii. 6, 15 he continues: ‘Sed me magis Suetonius movet qui 
ait hoc modo: Claudius Judwos impulsore Christo adsidue tumultu- 
antes Roma expulit.’ 

*This conjecture is not so remote as it may seem at first sight. 
In the ancient Church there was current a collection of facts com- 
mitted to memory, probably chiefly for catechetical purposes, large 
portions of which are preserved in the Hypomnesticon of the so-called 
‘Christian Josephus,’ and which is to some extent much older than 
the Hypommesticon. In the list of high priests in this ‘ Josephus,’ 
il. 80 (Migne, Patrologia Greeca, 106), which still awaits investigation, 
the beginning of the war of the Jews against the Romans is dated 
érous dyddou KXavdiov, the reference perhaps being to the Jewish re- 
bellion under Ventidius Cumanus (Schtirer, i, 8rd Ed., p. 568 f.; 
English translation, History of the Jewish People, Division I., vol. ii., 
pp. 171-173). Here it seems is a ‘Josephus’ who gives us a date in 
the reign of Claudius similar to the one found in Orosius. 

*Schiirer, iii, 4th Ed., p. 62 (passage not in the English transla- 
tion). Above in his text he dates the edict « probably a.p. 49,’ 

*Harnack, Die Chronologie, i., p. 236, also considers this statement 
worthy of notice. Cf. also his penetrating remarks in the essay 
(mentioned above, p. 270, note 1) Chronolog. Berechnung, p. 647 ff. 
Kduard Meyer, Ursprung wnd Anfénge des Christentums, p. 38, also 
speaks for the notice of Orosius. 

° Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum, iv., Suppl. No. 45. 

® Hg. by Hoennicke, Die Chronologie des Lebens des Apostels 
Paulus, p. 26. 


THE PROCONSULATE OF L. JUNIUS GALLIO 285 


made use of, though it still unfortunately offers some 
puzzles. Besides this there is a Bceotian inscription! 
which certainly mentions Gallio, but without a date. 
The inscription is found on a pedestal in an abandoned 
chapel of Hagios Taxiarches not far from Platza :? 


HITOATSITAATAIEQNAOYK / / / // 
NIONTAAATIONAANIANON — /// 
ITIATONTONEAYTHSEYEP [// 


1 a 


It was published by Dittenberger, who thus re- 


stored it : 
9 ods TAataréwy Aovx(cov) [Tov] 
viov addwva “Avavov ® [i] 
TaTov, Tov éavTns evep[y] 


ér[ qv] 
and referred it to the consulship of Gallio. There is no 
material impossibility in this view, but is it probable ? 
When a Greek city erects a statue in honour of Gallio, 
its benefactor, our first thoughts are of the proconsul of 
Greece. I should therefore prefer this restoration : 


n TOMS TXataéwv Aovx[tov Iov-] 
viov addtwva “Aviavov [avOv-] 
TatTov, TOV éavTHs Evep|y-| 
ér[nv]. 
But I will not deny that Platzaa may have shown her 
gratitude to Gallio after he had been Proconsul and 
had become Consul. 

Whether my restoration is possible can be decided 
by an inspection of the stone. Even a squeeze would 
enlighten us as to the length of the lines and the size, 
etc., of the letters. In 1911 Michael Gasis‘ of Berlin 


1] am indebted to Dessau for referring me to this inscription. 

2 Inscriptiones Grece, vii., No. 1676. 

3See Dittenberger’s note at this remarkable form of the name. 

* Dr. Michael Gasis of Athens was at that time a member of the 
Berlin University New Testament Seminar and was engaged upon a 


286 PAUL 


very kindly went to some trouble in the matter. At 
his request M. A. Keramopulos, his brother-in-law, 
twice (in July and September, 1911) investigated the 
ruins of the church of Hagios Taxiarches, but without 
having been able to find the inscription again. One of 
his workmen told him then that the inhabitants of the 
neighbouring village, Kapareli, had taken away stones 
from Hagios Taxiarches about 1900 to build their church 
of the Transfiguration, and again about 1905 to build 
their church of Hagios Panteleémon. M. Keramopulos 
then most kindly investigated both of these new buildings 
_and thoroughly cross-examined the peasants, but with- 
out success. (The letter of M. Keramopulos to Gasis 
is dated ‘Eremokastro 29.9.1911’). A re-examina- 
tion planned late in the autumn of 1924 by M. Oiko- 
homos at the request of my friend, Baron Hiller von 
Gaertringen, had to be given up owing to the unfavour- 
able weather. We must unfortunately reckon with the 
possibility that the church of Hagios Taxiarches has lost | 
its valuable inheritance from antiquity through the zeal 
of the Kapareliots for church building. 


great work, an interpretation of the New Testament from the stand- 
point of modern Greek as a living language. After his return home 
he was not able personally to concern himself about the inscription. 
He fell in Macedonia fighting for his country in the Balkan War of 
1912, an dzapy7 (first-fruits) of the European War of 1914-18, 


PLATE V. 





ALTAR FROM THE SACRED PRECINCTS OF THE TEMPLE OF DEMETER 
IN PERGAMUM. 


Imperial Period. 


(Front, first dedication.) 
(T'o face page 286. 


PLATE VI, 





ALTAR FROM THE SACRED PRECINCTS OF THE TEMPLE OF DEMETER 
IN PERGAMUM. 


Imperial Period. 


(Left side, second dedication.) 
[To face page 287. 





APPENDIX II. 


ON THE ALTAR TO THE UNKNOWN GOD 
(See the Autotype Plates V. and VI.) 


THe Greek inscription which Paul read on an altar 
at Athens, 


To an unknown God, 


and which he viewed and interpreted with the eyes of 
a monotheistic missionary, has often been illustrated by 
literary evidence culled from Pausanias, Philostratus, 
and Diogenes Laértes.2, We must conclude from this 
that in Greek antiquity cases were not altogether rare 
in which ‘anonymous’ altars’ 


To unknown gods, 
or 
To the god whom it may concern,? 


were erected when people were convinced, for example 
after experiencing some deliverance, that a deity had 
been gracious to them, but were not certain of the 


1 Acts xvii. 23, ayvdotw Ocd. On p. 78, note 8, I have already 
indicated that I regard the statement of Acts about the Athenian 
inscription as credible. However tempting it would be to defend this 
passage against Eduard Norden (Agnostos Theos, Leipzig and Berlin, 
1913), I must not attempt it here, but refer the reader to Eduard 
Meyer, who in Ursprung und Anfdnge, iii., p. 92 ff., says on all the 
chief questions raised by this great problem very much what I would 
myself have said. For further literature on Norden’s hypothesis see 
Otto Staihlin, Die alichristl. griech. Literatur, p. 1179. 

2Hduard Norden gives the best collection of materials (cf. note 1 
above). 

3 Bupors avwvijpovs. 4 dyvworots Peots. 

570 mpoonkovte Geo (Diogenes Laértes, i. 110). 


(287) 


288 PAUL 


deity’s name. Altars to ‘unknown gods’ on the way 
from Phalerum to Athens,! at Athens? and at Olympia 
are specially mentioned by Pausanias (second century 
A.D.) and Philostratus (third century <.p.), 

Hitherto there has been no epigraphical evidence 
forthcoming to confirm these statements of ancient 
writers, and I have not infrequently heard the view ex- 
pressed that their testimony counts for little. Now an 
inscription from Pergamum has come to light which 
perhaps gives ground for saying with a little greater. 
probability that Pausanias and Philostratus deserve 
credence. 

On February ist, 1910, Wilhelm Dérpfeld and two 
of his collaborators gave a report before the Berlin 
Archeological Society of the excavations at Pergamum 
during the autumn of 1909. The most valuable result 
of a campaign rich in brilliant discoveries was the clear- 
ing of the sacred precinct and temple of Demeter, which 
from about the end of the fourth century B.c. until late 
in the imperial period must have been an important 
shrine, as shown by the architectural remains and in- 
scribed stones. The most remarkable epigraphical dis- 
covery, next to the inscription recording the foundation 
of the building, was brought forward at the meeting by 
Hugo Hepding, and has since been published by him in 
the report of the excavations,‘ viz., the altar which is 
reproduced in our plates V. and VI. 


1 Pausanias, i., 1, 14. 

2 Philostratus, Vita Apollonti, vi., 3. 

* Pausanias, v., 14, 8. 

* Athenische Mitteilungen, 35 (1910), pp. 454-457. Hepding had 
before this very kindly allowed me to call attention to the inscription 
in a provisional notice in Die Christliche Welt, 24 (1910), cols. 218 ff. 
T am algo indebted to Hepding for his courtesy in supplying a fellow- 
student with the photograph of the two sides of the stone. For a 
detailed description of the altar I refer to the report of the excava- 
tions. The most important fact is that the altar was inscribed with 


ON THE ALTAR TO THE UNKNOWN GOD 289 


The text of the older votive inscription (Plate V.) 
on the altar which is probably of the second century 
A.D. 18 unfortunately mutilated. Hepding thinks it 
should be thus restored, in what appears to me also to 
be the most probable form :— 

eotsiayv[dorous] 
Kazit[ov]| 
dadodxo[s]. 

Symmetry requires that about six letters should be 
restored at the end of linel; therefore dyy[édous] is 
not probable, although shown to be a material possibility 
by a Latin inscription, dizs angelis,! of the second or 
third century a.p. from Viminacium in Serbia. dyi[ous], 
ay wrarows|, ayvlots| are improbable restorations for 
material and partly for formal reasons. Hepding? 
considered it possible that dy] wrdrais| should be read, 
because ina Peloponnesian inscription ® there is mention 
of Demeter and Kore (Persephone) as roty aywwrdrow 
Geotv, and 7 Meds is often found at Pergamum. But, on 
the other hand, he points out that it would be hardly in 
keeping with Greek religious feeling to change after a 
short time the dedication of an altar to the two chief 
deities of the holy precinct—and we know from the 
inscription on the left side of the stone, also reproduced 
in our Plate VI., that the dedication of this altar was so 
changed. It would be less remarkable that an altar to 
unknown gods should receive no particular attention 
and then should be annexed to another cult. We 
should also expect to find on the stone some trace still 
a dedication first on the front and then on the left side. The second 
dedication [rots ’A]lvéwos Kaolyvyros ériBopios, for which I refer to 


Hepding, is also reproduced here in autotype (Plate VI.). 
1 Jahreshefte des Oesterreichisch. Archaol. Institutes, 8 (1905), 


Supplement, col. 5. 
2 Athenische Mitteilungen, 35 (1910), p. 456. Cf. also Martin 
Dibelius, Theol. Lit.-Ztg., 836 (1911), col. 413. 
3 Corpus Inscriptionum Graecarum, i., No. 1449. 
9 


290 PAUL 


remaining of the horizontal beginning! of the O if 


aywratars were the original reading. Moreover, the 
adoration of ‘unknown’ gods harmonises well with the 
religious thought of the priests of the mysteries of 
Demeter at Pergamum in the second century <.p., as 
known to us from other inscriptions.’ 

These arguments of Hepding’s are illuminating, even 
if absolute certainty remains unattainable? I may add, 
however, that if Demeter and Persephone were intended 
we should expect the definite article and perhaps the 
dual, as in the Peloponnesian inscription. The mere 
fact that a ‘torch-bearer’ of Demeter dedicates the 
altar does not entitle us to conclude that he must have 
dedicated it to Demeter. We have at Pergamum un- 
doubted examples to the contrary,‘ and this very Capito 
of our inscription is perhaps identical with the man who 
dedicated another altar at Pergamum to Zeus Megistos 
Soter.° 

If rightly restored, the inscription 

To unk[nown] Gods 
Capit[on] 
torch-beare[r] 
tells us that about a century after the foundation of the 
Christian church in Pergamum® Capito, a priest of 


‘Cf. in line 2 of the autotype the beginning of the O after the T. 

* Cf. e.g., the dedication to the Pantheion by M. Aurelius Menogenes 
a hierophant and prytanis at Pergamum (Hepding, p. 454, and his 
remarks, p. 404 ff.). 

* Hepding’s restoration is advocated even more decidedly than by 
me also by Otto Weinreich, Deutsche Lit.-Ztg., 34 (1913), col. 2958. f., 
also in his Habilitation Thesis, De dis wgnotis, Halis Sax., 1914, p. 29 
ff, and by Eduard Meyer, iii., p. 96. 

‘Hig. a dedication to Helios by Cl. Nicomedes, a torch-bearer 
(Hepding, p. 453). 

° Hepding, p. 457. 

° The earliest evidence of Christianity in Pergamum is the letter 
of Christ in Rev. ii. 12 ff The foundation of the church may very 
likely go back to the time of Paul. 


= ee, <3 
eS aaa 





ON THE ALTAR TO THE UNKNOWN GOD 291 


Demeter of Pergamum, who officiated as ‘ torch-bearer’ 
at her mysteries, dedicated the altar to ‘unknown’ gods. 
In some way or other—it may easily be imagined from 
many analogous dedications that a hint had _ been 
received in a dream—Capito had become convinced 
that he was under obligation to gods whose names were 
not revealed to him. He showed his appreciation by 
giving them an ‘anonymous’ altar. 

No doubt the Athenian altar which made so deep 
an impression on the Apostle Paul also originated in 
the same sort of way—in gratitude to ‘an’ unknown 
god, the gift of an Athenian whose name stood perhaps 
beneath the line that Paul quoted. The missionary 
of the ancient world does not of course interpret the 
words as a modern epigraphist would.’ He interprets 
them with a strong interest for their deeper meaning, 
the same that he afterwards extracts from the poet’s 


words. 
For we are also his offspring. 


And so that which according to the letter applied to 
‘an’ unknown god becomes to the Apostle an un- 
conscious * anticipation of ‘the’ unknown God. 


1 Paul, however, himself hints that the sense he extracts from the 
inscription was not present to the consciousness of the person (or 
persons) who had dedicated the altar (Acts xvii. 23b.). 

2 dyvoowvtes, Acts xvii. 23. 


APPENDIX IIL. 


SANTA CROCE, FLORENCE. 


Amonast the most gratifying experiences that have come to me as a 
result of the publication of my Paul are letters from my friend Otto 
Crusius, now long departed, to whom since our time together at 
Heidelberg I have been bound with the strong bonds of fundamentally 
similar temperament and thoughts. In particular the importance of 
the idea of ‘originality’ was recognised by us. As an illustration of 
the Cross as a tree of miracle (above, p. 203) Crusius sent me from 
Oberammergau (31.8.11) the following poem, which he had written 
when strangely moved by a Florentine fresco. At my request he 
kindly gave me permission to print it. The subject, as the director 
of the Institute for the History of Art in Florence, Dr. Walther Heil, 
informed me, is a wall painting of the school of Giotto, perhaps a 
product of the studio of Taddeo Gaddi, in the old refectory of the 
Convent of Santa Croce (now the Museum of Santa Croce). For my 
part I reminded Crusius of the crucifixion scene in the Convent of 
the Passionist Fathers at Rome, as depicted in Immermann’s Hpi- 
gonen, so different yet of equal value for the understanding of the 
Crucified who is also the Living One. 


Before the Altar kneeled the saint in prayer, 

Fixed on the Crucified his steadfast gaze— 

How hard his way with danger and contempt! 

Sudden, with rapture thrilled, his heart beat stayed. 

Was it a miracle or but a dream? 

The chapel walls dissolved and heav’n appeared, 

The cross of shame became a growing tree, 

Raising its branches sun-ward fair and tall— 

See how each twig is weighted down with fruit ! 

The close air of the church no more he breathes— 

A gentle breeze bears scents of summer fruit. 

He sees the Glorified with arms outstretched, 

‘Thou in a holy hour hast gazed on Heaven. 

Thy dream is true. This earthly life is dream, 

The holy cross, it is the tree of life.’ 

Now God be praised for pain that veiled His face. 
(292) 


APPENDIX IV. 


DIAGRAMS. 


Ir will strike many people as a strange idea to 
attempt to make Paul’s teaching understandable by 
means of diagrams. This will especially be so in the 
case of those who fail to recognise along what simple 
and vigorous lines Pauline thought moves. When first I 


thought over the synonymity of early Christian ideas, , 


in setting forth (above, pp. 166-178) somewhat fully Paul’s 
central convictions, I did not, it is true, give diagrams, 
but I described them clearly in order to explain the 
various methods of regarding the subject.t In every 
instance I then said, when endeavouring to represent 
this synonymity, the circle which is to enclose the related 
ideas must first be drawn; and the radii, which within 
each circle separate those related ideas from one 
another, must be drawn afterwards. The next question 
was whether one should make the line of the circle or 
that of the radii the heavier. The dogmatic method 
which isolated the ‘concepts’ would draw the radial 
lines thick and the circumference thin. The psy- 
chological method, which emphasises the close relation- 
ship in meaning of religious metaphor, would make the 
circumference heavy and the radii light. 

1Cf. my preface to Heinrich Werner’s translation of Trench’s New 
Testament Synonyms (Synonyma des Neuen Testaments, ausgewahlt 
und tibersetzt, von H. Werner, Tiibingen, 1907), p. iv. f. and before 
that in Theol. Lit.-Ztg., 25 (1900), col. 74 ff In his able essay, Zevt 
und Raum im Denken des Urchristentwms (Journal of Biblical Litera- 


ture, 41, 1922, p. 222), H. von Dobschiitz has illustrated a fundamental 


idea of the Epistle to the Hebrews by means of a diagram. 
(293) 


< 
% 


294 PAUL 


On that basis I have very easily shown the difference 
between the various Pauline conceptions, as is indicated 
in diagrams 1 and 2; with which what is said above on 
p. 166 ff. should be compared. Here there are set side by 
side a strongly marked circle, which in spite of several 
faintly marked radii, is at once recognisable as a simple 
unity, and a circle with faintly marked circumference, 
the area of which is divided up by strongly marked 
radial lines. 

This scheme of Anes for elucidating our way of look- 
ing at Paul’s teaching can also be specialised to explain 
one particular important distinction that comes to light 





DIAGRAMS 1 AND 2. 


through that new view, namely the contrast between 
Paul’s faith in Christ and his so-called ‘Christology’ 
(cf. above, p. 165). 

The one view is that of lines going out on all sides 
like rays of light, unlimited and immeasurable, from the 
one central point of light, the experience of Christ (dia- 
gram 3). The other is rather of lines measurableiand in 
some way to be fitted together geometrically, perhaps like 
a polygon or like the side view of a staircase. This also 
could be easily portrayed graphically in different ways. 

More important than these methodological schemes 
are the possibilities of making Paul’s religious ideas 
themselves clear by graphic methods. It was very in- 


DIAGRAMS 295 


teresting to me to see how Hans Leisegang* very cleverly 
sought to exhibit the more important lines of the 
Apostle’s methods of thought in a pictorial scheme.’ 
When I had come to an end of my reflections, I got 
to know of that remarkable undertaking ‘the graphic 
interpretation’ of the thought of Angelus Silesius by 
Hans Haffenrichter, about which the editor*® writes as 
follows :— 

‘Hans Haffenrichter (one of the group of ex- 
pressionist artists ‘‘Der Sturm”) has made the attempt 





Diagram 3. 


to make the thought of the “ Cherubinischer Wanders- 
mann ” visible to the eye by means of graphic representa- 
tion. The statement needs no justification that only 


1 Der Apostel Paulus als Denker, pp. 9, 18, 22 (cf. also p. 106 n. 
3 above). 

2 Leisegang (p. 18) even believes that Augustine himself in his 
statement (made after becoming acquainted with Paul), tanta se miha 
philosophiae facies aperuit, hints that he had received a pictorial im- 
pression of Paul’s general scheme of thought. He also holds the 
opinion that Augustine’s thought itself is similarly capable of being 
represented pictorially. 

’ Innenwelt-Biichereii: Des Angelus Silesius Cherubinischer Wan- 
dersmann, herausg. von Walter Ehrenstein, 2nd HKd., Dresden, 1920, 
p. Vi. 


296 PAUL 


an expressionist can feel the call to such a task.) The 
pictures here produced, which attempt the expression of 
such movings of life in the soul, as pass the power of 
speech, prove that it has been possible for an artist of 
like experience to represent pictorially even the thoughts 
of a mystic.’ 

What I want to do is something less ambitious than 
this interpreting by expressionism (which perhaps itself 
stands in need of interpretation). I am satisfied with 
the simplest of diagrams. But I feel strongly that one 
has a right to use them. For Paul’s world of thought 
on religion is very strongly dominated by the category 
of space, which constantly finds expression in metaphor 
and is therefore graphically reproducible. Like the 
thought-world of mysticism in general : 


‘I dearly love two little words; their names are out and in, 
Out of Babel, out of me: in God and Jesus in.’ 


This confession of Angelus Silesius,? with its 
spatial orientation, thoroughly and originally Pauline as 
it is, may be taken as typical of unnumbered other 
statements of the mystical consciousness in general. 
The understanding of Paul’s mystically local in and its 
aiter effects in classical German mysticism is peculiarly 
instructive. 


"Here I may also indicate that Erich Seeberg, Zur Frage der 
Mystik, p. 10) not infrequently is reminded of Expressionist art by 
the so-called emblematic mysticism (which needs a chapter for itself, 
but it is for all that in a certain sense in place in the above considera- 
tion). 

“I cannot here agree with v. Dobschiitz, who denies this (Zest 
und Raum, p. 221). Hereall turns on the understanding (local inter- 
pretation) of év XpucrS “Inood. But on the other hand it is just as 
clear that Paul is fond of combining the space-category with the time- 
category, especially in drawing the contrast between the ‘ once’ and 
the ‘now’ (cf. Eph. ii. 12 f. and many other places). 

* Op. ctt.,.p. 101. 


DIAGRAMS 297 


In place of that doctrinaire misconstruction of the 
mystically-local 7m in the formule ‘in God,’ ‘in Christ 
Jesus, and which at one time dominated the com- 
mentaries, we are now offered a wonderful and 
thoroughly sympathetic understanding of it in the light 
of later mysticism. Without fear of schoolmasterish 
criticism * mystical can be used as a grammatical category, 
and we may speak of a mystical in. This mystical in (the 
saint in God or God in the saint) has its greatest influence, 





DiaGRam 4, DIAGRAM 5. 


The seven spheres of evil apart from The one sphere of salvation in the ex- 
salvation in the experience of the ‘old’ perience of the ‘new’ Paul. 
Paul. 


where, in the technical expressions of German classical 
mysticism, 77 is used as a prefix.’ 

This ‘mystical’ im, to which the German language 
owes such a wealth of beautiful creations both in ideas 
and words, while in origin it is pre-Pauline, has yet 
through the Pauline im Christ become the one great 


1Cf. above, pp. 163 note 1. 

*[Here Dr. Deissmann gives a list of such German words com- 
pounded with the prefix in—drawn from Otto Zirker’s Die Bereicher- 
ung des deutschen Wortschatzes durch die spdtmittelalterl. Mystik, 
Jena, 1923, and points out that many of them are Germanisations of 
Latin or Greek words similarly compounded.—W. E. W.] 


298 PAUL 


watchword of Christian Mysticism. And what a wealth 
of pictorial imagery also! Almost all these noble words 
(which for us to-day have largely lost their original vivid 
pictorial sense) can have their meaning displayed graphi- 
cally. 

But the same is true also of their original prototype, 
the Pauline certainty 7 Christ. All that is essential to 
the religion of the Apostle, in so far as it is definable in 
that phrase, can be set forth clearly in the contrasting 


Without God 





Diaaram 6. DriaGRAM 7. 
Without God in the World! God-intimacy in Jesus Christ ! 
&beo. ey TE ndopy | evOeot ev Xpict@ 'Inoov! 
Separated from Christ, without hope ! Hidden with Christ in God! 


diagrams 4 and 5. Here are the ‘old’ Paul’s seven 
spheres of evil, and the ‘new’ Paul’s one sphere of 
salvation (cf. also p. 177 £., above). 

Here in one glance it can be seen what the essence 
of Pauline Christianity is: the certainty that one has 
been released from that dark many-walled prison of 
the seven’ spheres of evil, and rescued into the place 


1 There is nothing important about the number seven; but in any 
case these seven spheres are mentioned repeatedly in Paul’s letters. 
The order in which they stand in the diagram could be other than 
that here represented; this also is only a detail not an essential 
matter. 


DIAGRAMS 299 


of light and freedom, the one sphere of salvation in 
Christ. 

The greatest of all the concentric spheres of evil, 
which surrounds and closes in the others is the cosmic 
circle. When that alone is realised in its naked terror, 
the depth of wretchedness enclosed in it is indicated by 
the words of Eph. ii. 12: 


Separate from Christ in the world, without Hope, without God! 

(Xwpis Xpiorod . . . édrida pur) Exovres Kal \dOeou ev TO Koo pw.) 

When, on the other hand, the one sphere of salvation, 
Christ, is realised, all that can be experienced of 
Salvation is summed up in the confession &Oeo év 
Xpio7@® “Inoov, or (formulated in Pauline words) ‘hid 
with Christ in God,’ Col. iii. 3. The normal condition 
in the world of being god-forsaken is changed in Christ 
in fellowship with God. ‘The purpose of figures 6 and 7, 
(p. 298) is to illustrate this (cf. also pp. 146 and 164, 
above). 

Diagram 7 also shows how simply for Paul the 
immense problem of the relationship of ‘Christ- 
mysticism’ and ‘God-mysticism’ received its solution. 
_ In Christ we are given ‘access’ to God (Eph. ii. 13, iu. 
12; Rom. v. 2), for the gates of the sanctissimum are 
thrown open. God-intimacy in Christ-intimacy : 

Hier ist ein Ring, 
Der nie anfing. 


Und stille schwebt. 
Sein innrer Punkt.! 


1/I have left this in the original German, as in a translation most 
of its charm would disappear. Literally it is: ‘“ Here is a ring, 
which never began. And itsinner point remains at rest.” —W. H. W.] 


A, ar 


at Mar 


pred 
4, AN 





INDICES 


PLACES, PERSONS, SUJBECTS 


Abba, 188 f. 

Abraham, 97, 164 f., 169 

* Access ’ to God, 299 

Achaia, 37, 74, 230, 262, 263, 279 

Acquittal, 168 f. 

Acro-Corinthus, 73 

Acts of John, 234 

Acts of the Apostles, 5, 7, 26, 73, 89, 
98, 126, 235, 238, 245, 249, 281 

Adam, 57, 178 f. 

Adana, 30, 63 

Adoption, 167-178 

Africa, 32, 89 

Agape, 22 (see Love) 

Agrippa, 278 

Ake Ptolemais, 229 

Alexander, the coppersmith, 70 

Alexander the Great, 33, 40 

Alexandretta, 33 

Alexandria, 10, 229, 230, 273 

(Troas), 40, 236 

Allegorical exegesis, 102 ff. 

Amanus Mountains, 30, 34 

Amos, 6 

Anatolian Railway, 32, 63 

Ancyra (Angora), 41 

Angelus Silesius, 295 f. 

Angora (Ancyra), 31, 41, 36 

Andronicus, 240 

Antinous, cult of, 120 

Antioch (in Pisidia), 33, 40, 63, 244 
(in Syria), 24, 32, 40 f., 64, 227, 
229, 247 f. 

Antipatris, 40 

Apollus, 229 


Appius, Market of, 228 
Aquila, 48, 237, 240, 243, 250, 262 ff. 
Aquinas, Thomas, 6 
Arabia, 228, 247 
Aramaic, 41, 91 
Aristarchus, 240 
Aristeas, Epistle of, 11 
Aristotle, 11 
Armenian Christians, 32 
Armstrong, W. P., 267 
Asclepius, 42, 234 
Asia Minor, 29, 31, 32, 33, 35, 36, 44, 
89, 212, 223, 242, 243 
,» Western, 37 
Asphodel, 31 
Assos, 236 
Athens, 10, 40, 225, 227, 233, 248, 262, 
288 
Athens-Pireus, 229 
Atonement, day of, 88 
Attalia, 40 
Augsburg Confession, 118 
Augustine, Confessions of, 25 
Augustus, 85 
Aurelius, Marcus, 278 
Avignon, 38 
Ayasoluk. See Ephesus 


Babut, E. C., 267 
Baptism, 183 

, a cult institution, 126 
Baptist propaganda, 227 
Barbarian, 35 
Barnabas, 239, 244, 247 
Baur, Ferdinand Christian, 57 


(301) 


302 


Bismarck, 25 

Bithynia, 247 

Bercea, 229, 242, 243, 248 
Bourguet, E., 265 ff. 
Brotherly love, 210 f. 
Busch, Moritz, 25 


Cesar, 33 
Cesar-cult, 192 
Cesarea, 236, 248 
Caligula, 63 
Calvin, 155 
Capito, a torchbearer, 290 f. 
, Gn. Vergilius, 277 
Carpus, 236 
Cenchreer, 21, 240, 243 
“Cherubinischer Wandersmann,’ 
295 
Chloé, 243 
CurRist. See JESUS. 
at right hand of God, 137 
, blessing of, 161 
» Cross of, 200 ff. 
crucified, 192, 196 ff., 244, 256 
, the body, 212 
, blood of, 198 ff. 
coming as Judge, 137 
, eternity of, 194 
exalted on the cross, 244 
exalted, 137, 193 
, faith of, 161 fff. 


; fellowship with, 135 f., 139, 144 f., 


152, 199 
» fulness of, 161 
the head, 212 
, the hope of, 207 ff. 
, humiliation of, 193 f. 
, immanence of, 139 
‘in,’ 138, 140 
in Paul, 130, 135, 139 ff., 187, 231 
» Kyrios, 194 
, the living, 192, 197 ff., 244 
living, the centre of Paul’s religion, 
197 
» Lord, 193 
, the Lord, 234, 256 
, the love of, 207 ff. 
, meaning of word, 39 
» parousia of, 218 f. 


INDEX I 


Christ. See Jesus (continued) :— 
the Pneuma (Spirit), 138 
» power of, 161 
» pre-existent, 195 
a present energy, 136, 137 
, proper name, 191] 
risen appears to Paul, 128 ff. 
, the Rock, 195 
, Son of God, 137 
the Spirit, 192, 195, 256 
, the Spiritual, Paul’s conception of, 
142 f. 
, riches of, 161 
, sufferings of, 182 f. 
, through, to God, 256 f. 
» with, 217 f. 
-cult, 56, 122 ff., 190 f., 251, 255 
-intimacy, 156, 163, 212, 256 f., 299 
-mysticism, 24, 147-157, 189, 208, 
255 f., 299 
Christologos, 136 
Christology, 6, 189 ff. 
Christophanies, 129 
Christophorus, 136 
Christian mysteries, 127 
Christianity, a cult, 122 f., 255 f. 
Christians, a body, 212 
, a family, 208 f. 
, members of Christ, 212 
Church, 214 
, idea of, 119 
Cicero, 11 
Cilicia, 37, 40, 50, 89, 223, 247 
Cilician gates, 247, 248 
plain, 30, 31 
Claudius, edict of, 261-284 
Clemen, Carl, 266 
Clemens, 240 
Colossx, 229 
Colosse, 20, 24, 55, 243, 247 
‘ Colossians,’ 73, 107 
Coppieters, H., 266 
Corinth, 6, 13, 37, 40, 48, 55, 72, 73, 
79, 227, 229, 230, 237, 240, 242, 
243, 245, 248, 262, 263, 264, 281 
» Gulf of, 73 
Corinthian Church, 240 
Corinthians, 14 
» lost letter to, 67 


PLACES, PERSONS, SUBJECTS 


‘ Corinthians,’ First, 22, 66, 104 
‘ , Second, 23, 35, 194 
Crete, 227, 229 
Crispus, 262 
Cross of Christ, 143, 197-203 
, a living reality, 203 
Crusaders, 33 
Crusius, O., 292 
Cult, 165 
and community, 116 
-history, 114, 116 
, meaning of word, 114 
myth, 121] 
, origin of, 119 
-propaganda, 226 
Cults, acting or reacting, 117 f. 
Cultus and cult, 115 
Cydnus, 32 
Cyprus, 37, 40, 127, 224, 227, 229, 247 


Damascus, 26, 34, 40, 49, 227, 228 

, Paul’s conversion, 128, 129, 130, 

136, 144, 145, 146, 152, 161, 189, 
190, 199, 231, 247 

Death, 93, 179 
Debtor, 171 
Delphi, inscription at, 265-284 
Demas, 239, 240 
Demeter, temple of, 288 ff. 
Demetrius, 246 
Demons, 42 

, belief in, 70 
Dessau, H., 274 
Diagrams, 293 ff. 
Didyma, 44 
Diogenes Laertes, 287 
Dionysius, the Areopagite, 146 
Dispersion, Jewish, 39, 42, 47, 246 
Doctrinaire Paulinism, 157, 181, 187 
Dogmatic method, 293 
Dogmatists banned mysticism, 154 f. 
Dérpfeld, W., 288 
‘Double’ Gospel, 117 


Kaster experiences, 122, 124 
Edification, 212 f. 
Egypt, 40, 45, 46, 109, 229 

, why not visited by Paul, 230 f. 
Epaphras, 240 


303 


Epaphroditus, 240 

Kpicurus, 11 

Epidaurus, 42 

Ephesus, 10, 13, 20, 21, 24, 29, 31, 34, 
36, 37, 40, 42, 55, 73, 223, 227, 
228, 235, 237, 238, 243, 246, 248, 
249, 263, 264 

Ephesian elders, 70 

‘ Ephesians.’ See Laodiceans. 

* ,’ letter to (so-called), 16, 24 

Erastus, 243 

Erbach, 203 

Eschatology, 6 

Ethics of ancient world, 78 

Eunice, 96 

EKuodia, 240 

Europe, 32 

Kutychus, 6 

Evil, seven spheres of, 298 


Faith, 119, 161 
of Christ, 165 ff. 
False brethren, 246 
Felix, 261, 262 
Fellow-captive, 240 
-slaves, 240 
-soldiers, 240 
-workers, 240 
Festus, 261, 262 
Fig-tree, 38 
Flesh, 179 
and spirit, 142 
Florence, 292 
Food offered to idols, 72 
Forgiveness, 167-178 


Gaius, 243 

Galatia, 227, 228, 246, 247-248 
Gasis, Michael, 285 

Galatian Christians, 242 

‘ Galatians,’ 22, 102, 103 
Galilee, 34, 41, 89 

Gallio, 74, 261-286 

Gamaliel, 94 

Genitive of fellowship, 163 
Gentiles, 238 

Gerhardt, Paul, 167 
Gethsemane, 39, 196 

Gishala, ancestral home of Paul, 90 


504 


Gnosis-Christian, the, 72 
God-intimacy, 165, 299 

-mysticism, 299 
Gonjeli. See Laodicea. 
Gospel of Jesus and of Paul, 257 f. 
Great city, moral corruption of, 73 
Greece, 44 
Greek, the international language, 41 
Groag, 274 


Hadrian, 277 

Haffenrichter, H., 295 

Haggada, 103 

Hamartiology, 6 

Handicrafts, ancient, 49 

Hegel, 116 

Heidelberg, 38 

Helena to Petechon, 250 

Heligoland, 38 

Hepding, H., 288 ff. 

Heraclitus, 58, 59 

Herder, 167 

Hermes, 224, 228 

Herod, 212, 278 

Hierapolis, 229 

Hiller von Gaertringen, Baron, 276 f., 
286 

Holtzmann, O., 264 

Homer, 38 

Hope of Christ, 216 ff. 

Horace, 11 

‘ House churches,’ 243 

Hymeneus, 70 


Iconium, 6, 227, 228 

Illyricum, 35, 40, 223, 227, 248 

Immortality, 218 

Imperator, 274 ff. 

‘In Christ (Jesus),’ 138-142, 146 f., 
162 ff., 168 ff., 187, 199, 208 f., 
219, 297 f. 

‘In God,’ 146 

In God, 297, 299 

‘In’ mystical, 297 

Inheritance, 175, 216 

Internationalism, Christian, 209 

Isis, 227 

Israel, fate of, 107 


INDEX I 


Jalabert, 266 f. 
James, brother of Jesus, 195 
, Epistle of, 12 
Jeremiah, Epistle of, 11 
Jericho, 34 
Jerusalem, 35, 40, 41, 73, 87, 88, 89, 
93, 212, 223, 227, 228, 235, 236, 
247, 248, 249 
, Paul brought up in, 90 
JEsuS. See CHRIST 
, artisan family of, 48 
, brothers of, 236 
Christ, ‘ of,’ 162-165 
-cult, the, 113-127 
, death of, 110, 113, 201 
, earthly life of, 195 f. 
, Lord, 191 
, the Messiah, 113, 191 
, obedience of, 196 
and Paul compared, 3 
and Paul, fellow-countrymen ?, 91 
personality not easily grasped, 4 
, resurrection of, 123, 199 ff. 
, son of David, 191, 195 
, Son of Man, 191 
, Spiritual body of, 200 
, woes to Pharisees, 128 
, work of, 123 
Jews, as sinners, 94 
Johannine writings, 7 
John, 198 
, Gospel and Epistles of, 155 
, interpreter of Paul, 7 
Mark, 239 
Jordan, 32, 34 
Josephus, 109 
, ‘Christian Josephus,’ 284 
Judaism, 124 
Judas-tree, 31 
Judgment day, 168 
Junias, 240 
Justification, 167-178 
by faith, 155 
Justus, Titius, 262 


Kant, 34 

Kavala. See Neapolis, 229 
Kenoticists, 193 
Keramopulos, A., 286 


PLACES, PERSONS, SUBJECTS 


Kingdom of God, 217, 219, 244 
Konia, 31, 36 

Konieh. See Iconium 

Kore (Persephone), 289 
Késtlin, 148 


Laodicea, 24, 55, 229, 243 
Laodiceans, letter to (Ephesians), 73, 
107 

Laodicia, 40 

Latin in Paul's world, 41 

Law, 93, 99, 119, 179 f. 

Lehmann, H., 264 

Leisegang, H., 295 __ 

Letter and Epistle contrasted, 9 ff. 
, the literary, in Hellenistic world, 8 

Logos, 34 
-Christ, 155 

Lord’s Supper, 242 
, the, a cult institution, 126 

Lois, 96 

Loisey, Alfred, 267 

Luke, 26, 88, 240, 264 

Luke, author of Acts, 7 

Luther, 18, 22, 48, 75, 108, 155, 167 
compared with Paul, 68 

Lycaonia, 247 

Lydia, 243 

Lysias, 11 

Lystra, 228 


Maccabean martyrs, 95 
Macedonia, 37, 242, 247, 248, 279 
Makkoth (Mishna tractate), 61 
Malta, 225, 229 
Marana tha, 192 

—cult phrase, 127 
Marcion, 155 
Mark, 240 
Marseilles, 38 
Mars Hill, 236 

, Paul’s speech on, 46 
Massacres, 32 
Meander, 31 
Mediterranean, 34 

world, 4, 6, 26, 29, 34, 35, 38, 39, 

42, 215, 228 

Messiah, 156, 190, 256 

, Kyrios, 123 


305 


Messiah, meaning of word, 39 
Messina, 29, 30, 31 
Miletus, 44, 70 
Miracle, place of in cult, 121 
Monotheism, 87 
Mystical genitive, 163 
Mysticism, 147-157, 165, 295 ff. 
, acting and reacting, 79, 149 ff. 
, ego-centric v. Theo-centric, 151 
, German, 296 
,» initiative in, 149 
, Neo-platonic, 149 
, types of, 149 ff. 
Mysticismus and Mystik, 148 
Myth, place of in cult, 121 


Neapolis, 229 

Nero, 73 

New creation, 1'78 ff. 
Nicopolis (in Epirus), 40, 229 
Nikitsky, A., 265, 268 
Noderney, 38 

Nymphas, 243 


Oberammergau, 292 
Offord, 266 
Oikonomos, 286 
Old man, 178 
Olives, Mount of, 39 
Olive-tree, 38 ff. 
Olympia, 288 
Onesimus, 19, 249 
Orange-tree, 38 
Origen, 6 

Orontes, 229 
Orosius, 283 f. 
Ovid, 11 

Oxford, 38 


Paleo-Prevesa. See Nicopolis 
Palestine, 37, 41, 73, 90, 127, 248 
Pamphylia, 40, 247, 239 
Papyri, 7, 11, 19, 44, 45, 75, 172, 
174 

Parousia, 218 f. 

hope, 13 
Pastoral letters, 73 


20 


306 


PAUL. 


(i) The man, his personality :— 


ailing body and physical powers, 60 

ancient description of, 55 

biography, 6 

characteristic pictures of, 249 

compared with Jesus, 3, 71, 103, 

188 

Luther, 18, 68, 75 
Philo, 108-110 

contrasts in him, 60-72 

energy of, 60 

genuine humanity, 57 

gloomy ?, 4 

a hero of religion, 6 

a homo novus, 74 

a homo religiosus, 81 

humble yet self-confident, 65, 68 

impulsiveness of, 69 

a man of the ancient world, 70-73 

outer man of, 57 

personality of, 55-81 

not a philosopher, 74 

physical weakness of, 60 

no picture of, 56-57 

pictured in his letters, 25 

powers of work, 60 

religious endowment of, 79-81 
energy, 161 

the religious genius, 6 

a religious genius, 79 

and Seneca, 73 ff. 

social class of, 47-51, 74 

tender and hard, 66-68, 69 

an unusual man, 58 

weak bodily presence, 67, 68 


(ii) Facts and incidents in his 
life :— 


apostle, signs of, 239 

the artisan, 50 

at Athens, 287 ff. 

born at Tarsus, 90 

brought up at Jerusalem, 90 
chronology, 7, 261 

and church dissentions, 68 
his collections, 68, 242, 248 f. 
companions, 239 ff. 


INDEX I 


Paul (Continued) :— 
contemporary, not mentioned by 


historians, 74 
conversion, Acts account of, 128 
» own account of it, 129 
his converts of lower classes, 241 ff. 
at Corinth, 261-286 
the cosmopolitan, 77 
Damascus, escape from, 26 
devotion to him, 69 
earned his own living, 48, 237 
* fellow-workers,’ 240 
forty stripes save one, 61-62 
guidance in missionary work, 247 
handicraft, 237 
heathenism, his ideas on, 78 
the Hellenist, 77 
the homo novus, 77 
journeys of, 39 
journeys, extent of, 63-65 
» hardships on, 236 
» length of, 227 ff. 
, travelled afoot, 236 
by sea, 234 
labours, 3, 224 
loved and hated, 68 
martyr death, 251 f., 255 
missionary, 6, 51, 224 ff., 231 
labours, 233-252 
work, financial basis of, 235 
persecuted at Antioch, 244 
prisoner, 238, 248 
at Ephesus, 17 
punished in synagogues, 246 
renounced marriage, 237 
renounced support, 237 
a Roman citizen, 50, 91 
Roman state, attitude towards, 77 
his scourgings, 61, 97 
shipwreck, 225 
speech on Mars Hill, 46 
at Stephen’s martyrdom, 127 
sufferings, 61-63 
in synagogue on Sabbath, 238 
thorn in the flesh, 60 
of Tarsus, 34 , 
tentmaker, 6, 48 
the theologian, 5 
wages, his thought of, 49 


a 


PLACES, PERSONS, SUBJECTS 307 


Paul (continued) :— 
world of, 29-51 
, culture of, 42 
, languages of, 41 
of, uniform, 40 ff. 


(iii) Jewish elements :— 
a Benjamite, 91, 97 
childhood of, 91 
the Christian still a Jew, 96 
Gentiles, attitude to, 98 
the Hebrew, 97 
the Jew, 55, 77, 81, 85-110 
Jew, glories in being a, 95 
his Jewish name Saul, 91 
Jewish in thought, 97 
the Law, his attitude to, 99 
a Septuagint-Jew, 90, 99 
of the Septuagint, his use, 99-104 
own people, his grief over his, 98 
persecutor, 110, 128, 131 
the Pharisee, 93, 110 
and ideal of martyrdom, 95 
, Strives for righteousness, 95 
» yoke of law, 131 
» his zeal, 94 


(iv) Language and style :— 


analogy, use of, 104 
dialectic, 104 

figurative language, 71 
gloomy view of world, 43, 45 
intolerance, 67 

irony, 67 

opponents’ view of, 68, 69 
powerful letters, 67, 68 
‘rude of speech,’ 75 
severe to opponents, 67 
tolerance, 67 

unliterary, 74, 109, 225 


vivid expressions of thought, 58 f. 


(v) Letters :-— 


letters, 5, 7, 55 

collected into Corpus, 15 
compared with papyri, 12 
dictated, 13 

difficulty of, 75-77 
fragmentary, 58 
hyper-criticism of, 16 


Paul (continued) :— 


genuineness of, 18, 74 

give picture of Paul, 58 

letters of imprisonment, 17 

lost letters, 14 

references to life of Jesus, 195 f, 
to sending out of twelve, 236 

understood by simple people, 76 

unliterary, 8, 15, 50 


(vi) Paulinism :— 


doctrinaire study of, 4, 5, 42 

‘doctrine’ of, 47, 155 

nineteenth-century interest in, 4 ff. 

really no such thing, 4, 5, 6, 18, 
23, 80, 161 f., 166, 247 

Pauline ‘ System,’ 5 

‘theology ’ of, 47 


(vii) His Christianity :-— 


acting and reacting mysticism, 152, 
153 
the Apostle, 223-252 
baptism, view of, 145 
blessing of Christ, 161 
brotherhood, sense of, 210 f. 
Christ in Paul, 161, 187 
-intimacy, 135, 152 
-mysticism, 24, 131, 147-157 
Christo-centric religion, 135, 258 
the Christian, 113-220 
the Christ-bearer, 136 
not Christology but Christophony, 
137 
church not fixed concept, 214 
and his churches, 215 
communion with God, 152 
with Christ, 144, 152 
connection of conversion and mysti- 
cism, 130 
conception of Spiritual Christ, 142 
his contemplation, 105-107 
conversion. See also Damascus 
convictions about God, 187 ff. 
about Christ, 189 ff. 
and the two Covenants, 103 
Cross of Christ, 143 
depression and exaltation, 65-66 
doctrine of the death of Christ, 201 


308 


Paul (continued) :— 
does not define, 142 f. 
ecstatic experiences of, 79 
eschatology, 207 
ethics, 207, 215 
experience of the Spiritual Christ, 
136 
his fall as a child, 92-93 
fulness of Christ, 161 
his gospel simple, 167 
God-intimacy, 153 
God’s grace, 145 
in Christ, 135, 161 ff., 187 
his influence in history, 255 ff. 
influenced by words of Jesus, 196 
Jesus a present reality to, 143 
Lord’s Supper, view of, 145 
mission, consciousness of, 231-233 
his mysticism, 79, 143 ff., 152, 295 ff. 
obligation to preach, 231 
his passion mysticism, 182 f. 
the power of Christ, 161 
reacting mystic, 152 
his reaction to divine visitation, 
105 f. 
riches of Christ, 161 
simplicity of his preaching, 244 
Spirit-Christ, his view of, 143 
the spirit-filled, 80 
strength in weakness, 61 
subject of his preaching, 244 
synonymity of * concepts,’ 166 ff. 
teaching illustrated by diagrams, 
293 ff. 
testimonies concerning salvation, 
166 ff. 
his ‘ work of Christ,’ 255 
Pausanias, 287 f. 
Pentecost, 81, 88, 89 
Pergamum, 44, 288 ff. 
Persephone (Kore), 289 f. 
Peter, 230, 236 
Pharisee propaganda, 93 
Phalerum, 288 
Philemon, 240, 243, 249 
, letter to, 19, 66 
Philip of Macedon, 40 
Philippi, 37, 40, 69, 227, 242, 243, 248, 
251 


INDEX I 


‘Philippians,’ 25, 193, 198 

‘ , letter to, 66 
Philo Judzus, 102, 108 
Philostratus, 287 f. 
Pheebe, 21, 240, 243 
Phoenicia, 127 
Phrygia, 40, 227, 228, 247, 248 

, Great Mother, 227 
Pilgrim steamers, 29 
Pisidia, 247 
Pistis (faith), 161 
Platza, 285 
Pleroma, age of, 46 
Plooij, Dr., 269 
Pneuma and sarxz, 142 
Pompeii, 49, 284 
Pomtow. H., 265, 268, 271, 282 
Pontifex maximus, 272 
Pontius Pilate, 196 
Popular preachers of Paul’s day, 226 
Potsherds, letters on, 11, 44 
Poverty of the churches, 242, 244 
Priscilla, 48, 237, 240, 250, 262, 263, 

264 

Proconsuls, 262 f., 278 f. 
Promise, 216 
Proselytes, 238 
Psychological method, 293 
Ptolemais, 40 
Puteoli, 228 


Rabbinic dialectic, 104 

Rabbinism, 6, 43 

Railways, 228 f. 

Ramsay, Sir W. M., 266, 283 

Reconciliation, 167-178 

Redemption, 167-178 

Reinach, A. L.-, 266 

Rhodes, 29 

Rhone valley, 38 

Religion, uniform basis of in Paul’s 

world, 42 

Resurrection, 218 

Righteousness, 95, 170 

Ritschl, Albrecht, 148, 155 

Rome, 10, 13, 35, 40, 73, 223, 227, 
229, 234, 248, 263 

‘Romans,’ 19, 23, 91, 94, 98, 104, 
LOT AS 


PLACES, PERSONS, SUBJECTS 


Romans xvi. a separate letter, 21 
Rothe, Richard, 116 

Rufus, 240, 250 

Riisch, Dr., 265 

Russian pilgrims, 29 

Rutherford, Mark, 76 


Sabbath, 86, 262 
Sacrifice, 201 
Salonika. See Thessalonica 
Salvation in Christ, 202 
Samos, 29 
Santa Croce (Florence), 292 
Sarus, 32 
Satan, 70, 223 
Saul, who is surnamed Paul, 89 
Schleiermacher, 6, 116 
Schmitz, glass-painter, 203 
Schwartz, E., 262 
Scilli, martyrs of, 76 
Scripture, idea of, 119 
Seeberg, Reinhold, 148 
Seleucia, 40 
Senatorial provinces, 278 
Seneca, 11, 73 f., 108 
Septuagint, 11, 86 f., 90, 99-104, 108, 
129, 146, 169, 175, 188, 190, 238, 
245 
-Jew, 90 
Serapis, 227, 234 
Silvanus, 240 
Simon-Barjona, 122 
Simon Peter, 122 
Sin, 93, 179 
Sinai, 35 
Slaves, manumission of, 172 ff. 
in Pauline churches, 243 
Social classes, lower and middle, 7 
Soli-Pampeiopolis, 31 
Sonship, 167-178 
Sophocles, 38 
Sosthenes, 263 
Sources, for Paul’s life, 7 
Spain, 35, 40, 73, 223, 227, 248 
Spirit, 79 
-Christ, 140, 155 
and flesh, 142 
guides Paul, 247 
, Paul’s view of, 143 


309 


Sporades, 29 
Steamers, 229 
Stephen-martyrdom, 63, 127 
Storks, 32 
Sturm, der, 295 
Suetonius, 109 
Suffering, 181 
Synagogue, 238, 262 
of the Olive-tree, 39 
Synagogues, 85 f., 89 
Syncretism, religious, 46 
Synthesis in religion, 126 
Syntyche, 240 
Syria, 33, 34, 37, 127, 223, 247, 263, 
264, 281 
Syrian Gates, 64 
Sythian, 35 


Tacitus, 109, 228 
Talmud, 228 
Tarsus, 4, 6, 31, 33, 34, 36, 40, 41, 50, 
63, 90, 93, 228, 247 
, Paul’s gate, 33 
, St. Paul’s Institute, 34 
Taurus, 30, 33, 34, 187, 227, 247 
Temple at Jerusalem, 88 
, a figure, 212 
Tersteegen, 6 
Tertius, 250 f. 
Testament, 175, 216 
Thessalonica, 6, 37, 40, 48, 227, 229, 
239, 242, 243, 248 
‘ Thessalonians,’ Second, 16, 22 
+), Hirst, 22 
Thomsen, P., 265 
Thorn in the flesh, 196 
Three Taverns, the, 228 
Through Christ, 142 
Tiberius, 81, 280 
Julius Alexander, 109 
Timothy, 62, 96, 240 
, letters to, 16 
Titus, 240 
, letter to, 16 
Tongues, gift of, 79 
Transjordania, 41 
Tribunican power, 276 f. 
Troas, 6, 37, 227, 247 
(Alexandria), 40 


310 


Troy, plains of, 31 
Tychicus, 240 
Tyrannus, 238 


Urbanus, 240 


Valence, 38 
Viminacium, 289 


INDEX I 


Vine, Johannine allegory, 203 
Verria, 229. See Beroea 


Weak brother, the, 72 
With Christ, 217, 219 
World-war, the, 63 
Yokefellows, 240 


Zoilos, 12 n. 


II 
GREEK WORDS 


Only a few are noted here; anyone familiar with the Greek New Testament 
will easily be able with the help of the other indices to find most of the other 
Pauline words. 


admodvtpeots, 172 n. 11 Aarpeia, 116, 118 n. 1 
amodotoXos, 230 n. 8 Necroupyia, 116 
dpxepevs, 272 
adpeows, 172 n. 2 oikodopy, 71 nu. 7 
yéyparra, LOL n. 2 mapakAntos, 139 n. 22 
mapeots, 172 n. 2 
diabnkn, 175 n. 3 mapovoia, 217 n. 4 
dixavdo, 71 un. 4 miotis, 161 ff. 
dwpeav, V1 n. 4 mpecBeuTns, 55 n. 3 


mpeaBurns, 55 n. 3 
‘EBpaios, 90 f. 


€Ovn (Gentiles), 98 oravpobeis, 198 nn. 1, 2 
€Ovn (Provincials), 98 n. 5 ovyxopa, 282 

eis and ev, 162 n. 3 avv xpiore, 217 n, 7 
exxAnoia, 214 nn. 2, 3, 4 odppayis, 145 n. 4 

ev and eis, 162 n. 3 capa, 174 n. 4 

emi, 164 n. 9 

emipedca, 116 tiyuns, 173 n. 4 


ecravpopévos, 143 n. 3, 197 n. 5 
viodecia, 174 n. 11 
Geparreia, 116 imep ths evdoxias, 216 n. 1 
Opnokeia Tivds, 116, 277 n. 5 
opos and PdBos, 72 n. 9 
iepoupyia, 116 
het xprcroddyos, 136 n. 6 


karakpive, 71 n. 4 xpioropdpos, 136 n. 6 
KAnpovopia, 175 n. 4 
kowevia, chap. vii, 135 n. 3 HPbn, 122 n. 3 


(311) 


Gen. i. 2 
iii. : 
Ki 1Di 0. 
xv. 6 
Deut. x. 16 
xxv. 4. 
xxvii. 26 


xxviii. 56 f. 


<xx Oe 
Job xxxiii. 4 . 
Pavctes 
Isa. vi. 1 
Xxxlii. 10 
Lie7 
Jer. iv. 4 
Dan. iii. 28 
Hos. vi. 2 
Hab. iii. 18 
2 Mace. vii. 3 ff. 
4 Mace. v. 32 
vi. 24 ff. 
vii. 4 
vii. 12 
viii. 13 
ix ely 
ix. 19 ff. 
x. 14 
xi. 18 ff. 
xii. 1-20 
xii. 9 
xii. 5 
xiv. 9 f. 
ey CS 
xv. 20 
XV. 22 


Xvi. 21 ff. 


[TI 


PASSAGES CITED 


A. FROM GREEK BIBLE 
195 | 4 Macc. xvii. 1 


92 2. 
102 


Xvili. 12-14 


XViii. 20 
Matt. iv. 15 £. 
Viet lS 
Winco we 
vi. 28 f. 
viii. 20 . 
ix. 15 
x. 10 
x. 14 
x. 23 
x. 29 
xi 
xi. 25 
<7 
xiii. 38 . 
Viel ee 
xvi. 18. 
XVLiZc.. 
xx. 25-28 
». ©. OPAL LS » 
XXL 'p1 &. 
xxii. 39 
Xxiii. 
xxiii. 15 
Xxili, 29 
XXIVne 
xxiv. 34 
xxv. 36 
xxvi. 12 
Xxvi. 64 
xxvi. 73 
XXVili. 5 
Mark vi. 8 ff. 
viii. 31. 


(312) 


. 235 n., 237 


. 95n. 
a9 Th: 
9D Tl: 
91 
171 
103 
103 
197 
Bes! 


235 n. 
113 
AS 
. 20 n. 
242 n. 
189 


122 
213 
113 
113 
173, 197 
113 
180 
CLS 
93, 226 
.125 n. 
219 
113 

. 20n. 
113 
113 

91 

197 
235 
113 


PASSAGES CITED 313 


Mark x.45 . : VO LiOg LOL | CACts ass Bilas. ; ; . 130 


xiv. 22 ff. “ : “0 WRB: ix. 4 ff. . ‘ 4 Je. O8U 
Sei , , Ley 1x. 22 7 : , . 128 
Luke ii. 1 ; : : eG ix, 24f, . : F ao 
os ee : " 235 n. iXUZ6 E ; ules 
oe ee 235 n. IX.-X Vi) ve : : . 239 
VS’ « ; ‘ Led Seo +, ; : eo eG 
» oly | : : . 2ST xiii. < : ; . 91n. 
9a eS e F 235 n. Si han : : . 238 
xia, < 3 : me Lik xi 9s. : : an ue 
mi47.f. , ; 125 n. Siltoloee : : . 224 
mote o: : ; LOS Milos ; : 239 
xii. 24 . : i cana xii, 14 . : , ee ae 
xis : ‘ wes DG bh Pye | ‘ ; eet 
Rito. : : 5 AWTS xiii. 50 . : . . 244 
SIL) : : ESD <1 SL: : 235 n. 
xiii. 31 ff. E - ark Rive be, : ; . 238 
Xvii. 24 , : . 219 Siva ’ A AD? Be Ds. 
xxi. 27 . : : dix ed xiv. 19 . : : + 235 
xxii. 29 : ; we LeD XV; oui ; : #239 
xxiv. 34 : : 122 n. <SVioe wee , : 1 98 
John i. 1 : ‘ : t 1O5 Viale : ” Reis ke. 
5A: : : cited xvi. 6, 7 : : a,.780 
Hise. : i . 156 xvi. 6 f. ; : tree 
Hise. -. , 138, 198, 244 VIG OMT ie : 2 80, 223 
Wisebr é A : 3 xvi. 9 f. : ‘ nae Br 
Whiize . : 138, 198, 244 S Vino : : COL 
viii. 36 : : patlia x Visas. : : on eae 
il. oo f. . 198, 244 RVil 2 : 4 2) 205 
xii. 34 . : BO Ns3s) SV 4 : é o, 243 
xiv. 16 : ; ela AED PHA Soy) : : 2. OF 
xiv. 26 : ; aloe Vit os : : Jurgos 
SV leihe ; * S PA0s3 x Vil Lo : / 1 24d 
xv. 26 . A ; . 189 xvii. 15 . ” ‘ . 247 
tag ee Cae ; . 139 Vill jae , ‘ eos 
xvLI33 . : : ek va! xvii. 18 . : te 2202226 
aaa. P ; 122 n. Xvi. 22). ; : 7140 
2 5 Pe : - 122 n. Vil eee ; 78, 287, 291 
oo oie ‘ : 122 n. Xvii. 28 . A : 78, 146 
ee) a é : 122 n. pqishb BPA . 7 eae 
eS bles : : . 198 pa glib d bee ; : . 262 
Acts ii. 9 ff. . : : 88, 89 xXvil. 2. : 237, 262, 263 
vi. 9 ; } j 89, 110 Vie. d : 48, 262 
ee ak ee ; ; ati; Xvill. 4 . : ; eas 
vii. 58 ; 4 AAs wy Xviii, 4 f. . 5 may 
viii. 1 ff. ; ; eeLLU Tv. : 3 eGe 
vil. 1: . - : A PAT xviii. 12 2 . Geel 
bot | : : : ot hitches yqisiieay pf : : wezoe 


+a) idee : eek lao XVileo : 7 . 262 


o14 


Acts xviii. 11 
xviii, 12 f. 
xviii. 14 ff. 
xviii. 17 
xviii. 18 
XViii. 18 f, 
Xvili. 19 
nebey lhet yt 
Kixivieir: 


Sab Oy tek 3 


EXO eis 
Rix ues 
Xie Lae 
xix. 23 ff. 
Xix.020:f. 
xx. 9 ff. 
SKALG ee 
XK 1ST: 
vee NEY) 
xx, 23 
50. aN 
bt. Ve 
Ro eer. 
xxi. 26 
RLV T ff. 
2. by Meh 
2.0.4 BW 
XxL 38) 3 
XXLioU gs: 
0.4 mar. 
xxit. 3 
XR 
Xxil. 6 
Xxli. 9 
pednby ENE 
Kx 2213 
xxii. 25 ff. 
XSi 
= Xi Gir 
xxiii. 16 
xxiii. 16 ff. 
Xxiil. 23 
xxiii. 24 
xxiii. 3] f. 
Xxiiil. 32 
KXiv. 6. 
xxiv. 26 
xxiv. 27-xxv..2 
xxvi. 4 ff. 


INDEX ITI 


263, 264 | Acts xxvi. 5 . 


74, 263, 264 
- 263 
263, 264 


: . 238 
36, 229, 247 
227 
238 
238 
239 
223 
235 
246 


41, 90 

90, 93, 94 
110, 128 
130 

130 

80 

88 

mW BE 

45 ne, 50, 91 
93 

246 

90 n., 109 
236 n. 


“45 n., iT n. 
264 
110 


xxvi. 10 ff. 
2.69 belt ba) 
XXvi. 24 
xxvi. 26 
XxVil.' 6. 
XXvii. 9 


xxvii. 21 ff. 


SXvil. 25:f. 


xxvii. 33 ff. 


XXvVii. 35 

XXvili. 3-6 
xxviii. 11 
xxviii. 15 


xxviii. 30 f. 
Rom. i. 1 


1. 3 
r 


228 

239, 248 

232 

195 

191 

191, 199 

- | 56 

35, 75, 98, 233 


Bares We: 

: 161, 169 
71 n., 169, 172, 176 
201 n. 

172, 199 

161, 169 

169 


PASSAGES CITED 315 

Rom. iv. 6-8 . 176 | Rom. viii. 10 139 
iv. 9 f. 169 viii. 14 ‘ 174 
iv. 11 145 viii. 15 93, 145, 174, 188, 189, 
iv. 12 . 164 196 
iv. 16 97, 164 viii. 15 fi. Ss E116 
72S... 102 viii. 17 175, 182, 208 
iv. 22 fi. 169 viii. 19 152 n. 
iv. 24 164 viii. 19 ff. 65 
iv. 25 199 viii. 21 ; fo AVE? 
a AS 169, 171 viii. 23 172, 174, 176 
Mees : 147, 189, 299 viii. 24 ee 
v. 5 . 145 viii. 26 f. 79, 118 
WeiGe os 201, 202 viii. 26 ff. 139 
Worst. . 201 viii. 29 208 
Vay, : 170, 199 viii. 32 nu PAL 
v.10 170, 171, 179, 199, 202 viii. 33 168, 169 
wWeLl> ; 171 viii. 34 137, 199 
v. 12 fi. : 57, 104, 179 viii. 34 f. 139 
eek as pe ; 179 viii. 35 163, 208 
Talis lg 4 viii. 35 f. 63 
v. 19 201 Vill oD tion ee 66 
aes Eigee 178 viii. 35-39. 18] 
vi. 1-14 179 viii. 38 f. 189 
ie te, 179 viii. 39 139 
vi. 3 ff. 183 Ixy pea 
vi. 4 182, 196 ixeo 96, 97 
Wiedil. : 182 ix. 8 102 
Win Gs F VR2R1TS 3179 ix. 10 97, 169 
wus. -: ; . 182 ix. 21 71 
vi. 10 199, 202 isaoo . 164 
vi. 11 179 1x.-xi. 98, 107 
vi. 17 172 x. 4 179 
vi. 19 717, 172 x. 6 169 
vi. 20 172 ras BE 164. 
vi. 23 139 x. 15 232 
vii. 179 mab At © 1 DOAOTEOT 9S 
vii. 5 178 Xie “ PLZ 
vii. 6 178 xi. 12 104 
vii. 9-11 91 <ihhe 38, 39 
vii. 14 ff 95 pa UN ea 98, 126 
vii. 15 ff 94 pa yA | 104 
vii. 23 178 xi. 24 104. 
vii. 24 66, 93 Niele: 118 
vin. Lb .. 168 xii. 4 ff. 212, 214 
Mills. 195 ana) 4 139 
viii. 6. 179 xii. 14 196 
Vil. 7 « 170 xiii. 1-7 rir 
viii. 8 . . 178 xiii. 7 72 
viii. 9 . 139, 178 xiii. 8 180 


316 


Rom. xiii. 8 f. 
xii, 14 
xIV.i 
xiv. I-xv. 13 
xiv. 15 
xiv. 17 
xv. 16 
xv. 19 
xv. 19-24 
xv. 20 
Xv. 22 ff. 
Vere. 
Vio 
xv. 24 
xv. 28 
xv. 29 
XV O i: 
XVL ut. 
Vi 
XVieis 
xvi tf. 
SVicoive 
aie ROPE ee 
Vi On 
Xvi. 11 
XViALS 
xvi. 18 


RVioe 
1 Cor. 


INDEX III 
196 | 1 Cor. ii. 2 
157 ie 
72 Ry: bys) 0 
67 ii. 6-10 
202, 209 li. 6-16 
+ E89 ii. 8 
139,251 Of s, 
73, 223, 239 li. 10 
35 iL? 
230 ii, 13 
223 iii. 1 ff, 
is] lita? 
231 Dn. ili. 6 
223, 248 ili. 9 
248 110". 
161 ini. 10 ff. 
251 ii. 10-13 
243 ATR AN Leo. 
240 iti. 13 ff. 
240 iii, 16. 
237 ii. 19 f. 
214, 230, 243 lil. 237. 
240, 246 n. iv. 1 
. 240 iv. 6 
246 n iv. 9 
66, 240 iv. 9-13 
67 iv. 9 ff. 
196 iviize. 
70 iv. 14 f, 
" 240, 246 n. iV.20 
13, 239 n., 250 Ad beso 
243 Vous 
139 v. 3-5 
244. v. 4 
168 v. 7 
135, 139, 144 v. 9 ff. 
EZAS Wie bith, 
153, 174, 213 vi. 1-11 
t 145 Vi? fi 
; A Sa ¥ fs’ vi. 7 
72 ura a Bho 
Ae eB Vie a Tae 
4 59, 72 vi. 19 . 
143, 197, 200 ViIZOne 
136, 200 vii. 1 
75 vii. 5 
$577 Y4 Vii. 7 
139, 144, 172, 176 vii. 8 . 
75 vii. 10 


143, 197 
. 2a 
72, 239 

75 

. 106 

196, 201 

: - Eee 
59, 106, 143 
145 

72 

re 

244 - 

229 

240 

168 

7] 

213 

213 n, 

219 

139 

Seay ts” 

153, 174 

ps Ne} 


: - 196 
69, 139, 170 
: Loe 
139, 145, 212 


219, 237 
154, 196 





PASSAGES CITED 317 


1 Cor. vii. 11 , : . 171 | 1 Cor. xii. 28 : : opal4 
vii. 18 : : . 95 xii. 31 : ; SPAN 
vii. 23 ; 172, 173, 174 Xii.-xiv. ; : LOS 
vii. 26 ; ean. Zor mille: : ; eA 
vii. 29 : , yu2oa xili. 1-3 : i - 156 
vii. 31 : : rer 4b xiii. 3 : P re eda 
Wile. ; : ere G/ xili. 9 = : Beret 
viii. 1 : : De <i ; ; Wa 02 
Vili. 6 : ‘ 3, 195 saith be bye : : ae 
viii. 10 : : ary. Sivaten: . Pgs oui k 
viii. 11 . LE ZUz, 200 xiv. 8 : : abe yal 
‘se 3 Pe ; 122 n., 129 X1Vourd . : i as 
ix. 4 ff. : ; OS xiv. 18 ; Tb Chad 
IZeoH : E - 236 xiv. 23 : : sale 
ix7 6 231n xiv. 24 f. 245 
chert 71, 104 Vac 199, 201, 202 
ix. 9 eo = 99 xvi 4:1. 196, 200 
ix. 9 f. 102, 240 KvVcor Ge »* 129 
ix. 14. : mee Loon ad t xvodees ; : 124 n. 
ho A : eat XV. Our: t F . 129 
ix, 16. . : Wi (22a. 200 ZV : og 1107-282 
be : : WP e-Rye xv AU tT: ; ; ee OD 
isu. 2 : 5 oe Ribs xv. 10 3, 145, 154, 224, 232 
1x2) f. : é 41, 77 xv. 14 . 199, 200 
ix. 24 . ‘ : os ard} SVoLe 178, 199, 200 
ce fae : : cn OD xv. 19 : ; eka 
sod Bae : ; fe xv. 22 . STALIS CEO RAL 
x. 1-12 : ; rae lad RV us tier. ; . 104 
oot a : . 103, 195 xv. 23 153, 174 
SPELO) ,« - 135, 145, 198 xveue it ‘ ; Ve2Lg 
Ze) v6 : - Ae De xv. 25 * P . 219 
See 1 iit - ‘ Te xv. 26 , f . 219 
SA2U : r a) ee fs xv. 28 , ; Ey Alt 
TEU). A : al ey? XVitaLiie : ; Dwi cs 
iiahoy f< ; : . 214 XV. do p ‘ Soweis 
oe ay ae A : we xv. 35 f. ; : ae 
xi. 20-34 : F o) 242 SVD tise be 2, LOA 2TH 
ra Mer : : . 196 SS Eb Ll lite : . 200 
mia it. : - A Ad xv. 45 : ; Poy, a Pte) 
xi. 24 ff. : : . 196 xv. 45 f. . . 142 
xi.'25. : ‘ al ds SV iAd ns : . 142 
> at hype < 3 79, 196 xv. 49 5 : wn 
Paik we : : 79, 139 xv. 50 : > Pit 
xii. 8 f. : : . 142 xv. 51 : : . 200 
Rio Oe os : ; eds tt xv. 51 f. : ? A AY, 
xii. 12 : : abe xv. 51 ff. : : wi ees 
Zito ; ; WwW 3 xv. 54 f. : : . 200 
xii. 27 ; . 174, 244 xvi. 1 f. : é 242 


Ste) Le : , Pe ALS xvi. 5 i uy 248 n, 


318 


1 Cor. xvi. 8 


2 Cor. i. 


Xvi. 9 
xvi. 10 


INDEX III 
PO Coe WOOL. eWeek 
73, 230 n., 247 vi. 4 
.- 239 vi. 4 ff. 
: : 170 n. vi. 5 
. 214, 248, 251 n. vi. 9 
é : ; 13 '¢ bad Repl 
- 127, 192, 244 n. Wile ene. 
164, 182 vii. 6-9 
63 vii. 8 ff. 
232 vii. 11 
68 viii. 2 
69 viii. 6 
196 Vili. 9 
239 viii. 17 
144 viii. 19 
71 Vili. 23 
66 1x12 
14 PAID Py 
66, 67 p odk Ney PA 
244 n Keto cee 
5 ste) Xfoul: 
230 n., 247 x0 
A 71 owe! 
v0 ae B33!) x. 10 
: . 246 +e Be 
59, 175, 179 ree, 
180 1.6) ee 
92 <isec) oe 
138 xi Ole 
170 <ILO Re 
170 Kibo dt. 
170 Xiel4e, 
170 xraZOin 
ED xis oa 
130, 144, 178 Xs Diet 
60 Kio it. 
63 xi, 23-33 
: ; 65 xi. 24 ; 
49, 60, 217, 218 Lazo 
65 Kin 2O-07 
‘A xi, 26 
219 xi. 26 f 
164 > ee vdet 
68 Xi. 200. 
163, 202, 208 Xi. ost: 
131 xii. 2-4 
232 abr f 
171 Xii1S ae 
232 xii. 8 f. 


139, 169, 170 
178, 232 

63, 65 

62 

74 


212 


. +93 
239 n. 
14, 67 
. 245 
242, 244 
239 n. 
. 194 
239 n. 
. 239 
239, 240 


164 

. 1538, 174 
67, 68 

230 

67 

75 

237 

237 

164 

67 

70 

iy 

55, 90 n., 97 
62 

63 

7 233 

61, 97, 238 
61h 64, 234, 235 


79 
"60, 70, 223 
60 


2 Cor. 


Gal. i. 


Pe ee ee 
° . . e . . 


ee late tens 
. . . 


PASSAGES CITED 


23 
24 


. 26 
rial 


28 


20 
iv. 1, 2 


Vet 
iv. 1-7 
iv. 4 


5 


iv. 5 f. 


xii. 9 . 55, 61, 80, 135, 136, | Gal. iii. 
161 lii. 

<1yL0 63 iii 
xii. 12 239 ili 
sin is ff. 237 iii. 
xii. 16 : ‘ pA he: iii 
xii. 2 4 : 244 n. iv 
xili. 3 : ; : 1286 iv 
xii. 4 . 55, 198, 199, 200, iv 
ZO 217 iv 

xiii. 5 : rou LU te iv. 
ein, 13 139 iv 
7 FOL iv. 
a0 68, 174 iv. 
13 £. ey LLG iv. 
13 ff. 128 iv. 
14 : . 94 iv. 
16 129, 130, 231 iv. 
17 128 n. iv. 
19 195 iv. 
. 21 247 n. iv. 
mae 110 iv. 
1 79 iv. 
2 ; , 247 iv. 
4. 67, 172, 174, 246 Vv. 
9 195, 230 Vv. 
10 154, 248 Vv. 
1] . 91n. Vv. 
15 : 78, 98 Vv. 
16 161, 162, 169 Vv. 
17 : 103, 139, 169 Vv. 
20 ~=: 1180, 135, 136, 139, 153, Us 
161, 170 n., 182, 201, 202 Vv. 

21 ; ‘ : oe 201 v. 
1 143, 197, 244. Vv. 
5 104, 239 Vv. 
6 169 Vv. 
8 101, 169 vi. 
10 62.n., 131 Vi. 
11 170 n. vi. 
12 : . 164 vi. 
Lee. 99, 173, 202 vi. 
15 fi. : oe U7 Ds | ph. i 
16 102 x 
17 170 , 
18 175 1 
TOR): 103 i. 
al ti. : - SG iL 
22 : ol OL i 


319 


: . 164,178 
: 169 
139, 162, 174 
145, 157 

. ‘208 

153, 174 

104. 

175 

172 

46, 93, 195 

173, 174, 176 

: ren yy y:* 
145, 188, 189, 196 
175 

172 

172 

: : Te LOU 
: ; 69, 246 
247 n. 

225 

ANE 

66, 153 

103 

175 

172, 174 

170 n., 178 

169, 170 

157, 162 

200 

yard) 

174, 180 

180, 196 

68 


244 


209 


174 

171, 172, 176 
199 

139, 162 

71, 172, 175, 176 
162 


320 INDEX III 

Eph. i. 18 175 | Phil. ii. 12 
i. 19 136 iL] 
1.20 137 ii. 18 
nv. 161 1520 
ii. 11-22 A . 209 ii. 30 
ii, 2 164, 178, 299 lii. 1 
1.128. } . 296 iii. 2 
ii. 13 171, 177, 199, 299 iii. 5 
li, 14 171 ili. 6 
li. 16 202 iii. 9 
ii. 18 147 iii. 10 
li. 20 ff 212 LiALS 
8674 | 139 ili. 12 ff 
li. 22 139 lil. 14 
lii. 1-7 231 lii. 18 
hh es 129 iii. 21 
iii. 8 161, 244 iv. it 
411310 ew ; ARG voce 
Tap ES AL YR 161, 164, 189, 299 iv. 4 
iii. 17 PL Ot reer) 
li. 19 163, 208 iv. 10 
iv. 13 161 iv. 12 
iv. 15 wie ivais 
IV.4h 1 139 iv. 15 
12122 178 iv. 18 
lv. 28 69 iv. 22 
iv. 30 139, 172, 174 | Col. i. 2 
Vie 201 4. 
v. 5 175 1. 6 
v. 15-vi. 9 73 br 
v.18 139 i. 8 
Ven 164. i, 14 
V. 23 212 i. 15 ff 
vi. 6 174 i. 18 
vi. 9 243 i. 20 
vi. 10 ff qi i. 20 ff 
VEEL t 70 12) 
vi. 20 55 hig 

Phil. i. 8 d 163 eos 
He ae 238 1. 24 
eas: 65, 217 i. 29 
yaad 139 ii. 1 
i. 29 162 11. 5 
li. 1 139 rhb | 
li. 6-11 193 li. 10 
17 173 ii. 11 
i. 8 196, 201 li. 12 
i. 9 137, 138, 198, 200 i. 13 
li. 9 f. 192 ii. 14 


216 


+ Ge 

71, 240 

255 

139, 146 

, 67, 246 

55, 90 n., 91, 93, 97 
; .) a 

161, 169, 170 
135, 136, 164, 182 
129. 145 

156 

71 

: > ea 
136, 142, 200, 218 
4 : » Bo 
240 

- 136 

139, 171 

237 

- 63 

3, 156 

237 

237 

109 

162 

162 


ers aS 


56 © 


239, 240 

: » 139 
171, 172, 176 
- 195 

212, 214 

171 

202 

170, 171 

168 

: - 232 
164, 182, 212, 214° 
136 


- 139 
139, 164 
182, 183 

«i 172 
171, 202 


Col. ii. 15 71 
ii. 16 103 
ii. 18 103 
ii. 19 212 
ii. 20 182 
ii. 23 118 
iG | ‘ : 137 
ii. 3 146, 165 n., 182, 217, 299 
iii. 10 eiris 
iii. 11 ; 35, 98, 209 
iii. 12-iv. 1. Rebar Bs) 
TiO, se 163 
iii. 22-25 243 
lil. 24 175 
woe 243 
Weea 230 n., 247 
iv. 7 240 
iv. 10 240 
iv. 15 214, 243 
iv. 18 : 13 

1 Thess.i.1 . ~ 146 

Pie 163, 216 
icon. 56 
cf pee 146 
Heo: 68 
tid 4 . 66 
10. 48, 49, 237 
are ae G6 
gic ft. 262 
ii. 18 70 
iii. 1 233 
iv. 9 ff 244 
iv. 15 196 
iv. 16 218, 219 
Fi iv. 17 217, 219 
Wet: 197 
Wee i: 196 
Yoo: 71 
v. 10 O17 
v. 19 80 
2 'Thess.11  . 146 
ra: Mae 56 
i2do 219 
i. 2. 246 
ta ae 70 
iii. 1 241 
iii. 2 262 
il. 5 164 
ii. 8 48, 49 


2 Thess. iii. 10 f. 


1 Tim. 


De Lim. 


PASSAGES CITED 


ii. 17 
Lut 
gal 4 
i. 14 
i. 16 
i. 19 
i. 20 
hay 
Take 
Nisls, 
ried tier 
volO. 
Wella 
Fil Site 


11.15. 


Iv. lor 
Tit. 1. ] oD, 
ill. 


Philem. 1 


3 


2 
9 
10 
ll 
23 
24 


Heb. ii. 2 


x1. 34 


James ii. 3 
2 Pet. iii. 16 . 
1 John ii. 1 


iil. 14 


Rev. ii. 4 


ii. 


12 fi. 


xx. 20 


71, 214, 240, 243 


321 


48 

13 
231 
110, 200 
162 
164 
71 

70 
232 
102 
162 
122 n. 
236 
70 


102, 196, 240 


62 


55 
238 
20 
240 
240 
103 

eh ts ae se 
236 n. 
76 
139 
178 
243 
290 
127 


322 INDEX III 
B. PAPYRI. 

Archiv fiir Papyrusforschung— Griechische Texte aus Aegypten, 
Bipaorort 2 : . 45 I. Papyri des Neutesta- 
4,p.174 . ‘ ! . 465 mentlichen Seminars Ber- 

4,p. 558. : , eG lin— 
6, p. 204 ff. : 21 No. 20 : ; ; a 

H. I. Bell, Jews and Christians Oxyrhynchus Papyri— 

in Egypt— HoNoe LO gue ; : ae 
pi ee 8273 1 No, 744. 4 
p. 23,15. ; - 276} No. 903. } . ae 
P, 23,3200. 1 © ee 282) No. 1067, . 
DSP irume hic! dah ace sPape Class Phlol nies 
p. 25. ; ; . 230 No. 5 45 
pp. 101 and 108 f. ‘ seal 6 : : ; : ; 

Berliner Griechische Urkunden-— Paris Papyri— 

Noml1040 0. ; a No. 10 : ; : . Va 

Flinders Petrie Popa a iii.— No. 51 . . . - 21 
No. 35aandb. ' . 20 | Septuaginta-Papyri— 
No. 364  . : : 5 P48 p06 diag ar : : «AEG 
No. [144] . ; ; 2G 


C. INSCRIPTIONS. 


Annales du Service des Anti- Corpus Inscriptionum Latin- 
quités— arum— 
1905, p. 150 ff. . : CeO IV., Supp. No. 45 : . 284 
Archiv fiir Papyrusforschung— VI., No. 1256. . - 275 
5, D. 169 : ; : 56 VLE Supp. No. 14,727 Re 7 (5° 
Bourguet, De Rebus Delite aN het oie + rn aa 
Dittenberger, Orientis Greeci In- 
Pea: ; i cue scriptiones Selecte— 
DGD EME cate he ete ens O74. y | 
63 265 No. 665, 15 : : Mae 27 
is BOM at ted Bes «rong | ENO. 660)1) 2. 2 
p. 78 ; "on | Dittenberger, Sylloge*— 
79 289 No. 406 (= 3, No. 851) . 278 
Lhe ate ac MURR UG AA No. 801 2°.) Soe 
Corpus Inscriptionum Greca- Inscriptiones Grece— 
PELL ses VIL., No. 1676. : . 285 
I, No. 1449. s) (288 |) XTT., 5, No. 712. : 0 ee 
I., No, 9904 . . - 39] Jahreshefte des Oesterr. Archdol. 


Instituts— 
8 (1905), Beiblatt, col. 5 . 200 


i 


S52 eS 


Acts of Paul, iii. 
Beda— 


De temporum ratione, a. 4007 283 


2 Clement ix. 
Didache,x.6 . 
Dio Cassius— 

lvii. 14, 5 

EXE ULO 

ike 

lx. 24, 1 

lx. 25, 6 
Diogenes Laertes— 

i. 110 
Frontinus— 

De aquis, i. 13 
Herodotus— 

Vv, 10} 
{gnatius— 

Ephesians ix. 2 
Jerome— 

De viris inl., 5 

In Philem. 23 


PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY THE UNIVERSITY PRESS LTD., ABERDEEN. 


PASSAGES CITED 





D. AUTHORS. 
55 | Josephus— 
Antt. xix. 5, 2 
Rite Doo 
195 Sxe lois 
127 | “ Josephus ”— 
Hypommnesticon, ii. 80 . 
280 | Makkoth— 
280 § 14 
280 | Orosius— 
279 vii. 6, 15 
278 | Pausanius— 
i Loid 
287 v., 14,8 
Philo— 
275 De monarchia, ii. 1 
Philostratus 
213 Vita Apolloni, vi. 3 
Seneca— 
136 Ep. Mov., 104, 1 
Tanchuma on Gen. iii. 22 
90 | Vitruvius— 
ou ite! 


323 


273 


278, 282 
273, 282 


284 


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